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KILTIE McCOY 




Patrick Terrance McCoy 



KILTIE McCOY 

AN AMERICAN BOY WITH AN IRISH NAME 

FIGHTING IN FRANCE AS A 

SCOTCH SOLDIER 



By 

PATRICK TERRANCE McCOY 



ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS 



Wl 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 191 8 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company / 

A/ .^ 



V i 






PRcas or 

BRAUNWORTH ft CO. 

COOK MANUFACTURCRS 

BROOKLYN, N. V. 



OCI -4 ISIB 

©Ci.A5U3605 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I Calling John Bull's Bluf7 1 

II From Mufti to Kilts 13 

III The Winter OF Our Discontent .... 27 

IV Kissed Into France 41 

V Veterans 58 

VI Rest 73 

VII The Crater's Lip 86 

VIII Rats and Cooties 98 

IX A Call Upon Fritz 106 

X Prisoners and Coat-Tails 114 

XI Hard Luck Battalion 128 

XII Cowards 139 

XIII In No Man's Land 152 

XIV Wanted— Excitement ....... 162 

XV I Have Five Sisters 173 

XVI All is Fair in War 182 

XVII The Man in Command 191 

XVIII Pals 204 

XIX Fritz's Back Yard 213 

XX Vulnerable 226 

XXI Mother 236 



KILTIE McCOY 



I 

CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF 

I MIGHT well, if I chose, charge a woman with the 
responsibility for my enlistment in the army of His 
Majesty, King George V of England. It was a charm- 
ing little English matron, armed with a measly little 
white feather who fanned into a blaze of action the 
tiny flame that had long smoldered in my subconscious 
self. Adam blamed a woman, but Adam died quite a 
while ago as I remember the story. There was some- 
thing, however, before the woman and her white 
feather, that actually brought me, an American citizen 
and proud of it, to enlist at the very outset of the 
world's greatest war, to leave my country, my flag, 
my citizenship, even my name, and to enter the service 
of the king of a foreign land. 

And that something was a knowledge of that 
great American game — you may call it penny-ante, 
draw, or just plain poker as you like — which prompted 
me to action. 

If there is anything that makes me boiling mad, 
it is to have somebody steal a pot on a pair of deuces 
when I have jacks or better. So when John Bull tried 

X 



2 KILTIE McCOY 

to bluff me, I just naturally called. That's why I 
now have a useless left arm and a record for having 
served more than two years in the world's greatest 
conflict, having been through more experiences than 
is usually allotted to the man who comes out alive. 
It happened this way. 

I was born and reared in the little city of Holland, 
Michigan, where the principal excitement is going fish- 
ing and making furniture. My father's father was one 
of tlie original Holland settlers in that city and my dad 
was one of its most prominent lumbermen. On my 
mother's side, my grandfather was the Reverend Cor- 
nelius Vorst, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. 
Since I was named for him, I suppose it had been the 
hope and expectation that I would follow him into the 
pulpit. 

But my mind, early in life, turned to other chan- 
nels. I loved excitement; I wanted to see the world 
as it is lived. The quietness of Holland irked me. I 
longed for action and action I could not get among 
the good folks of my native city. 

I got it into my head I could sell goods, and it 
didn't take me long to act. My chance came and I 
took to the road. Then I began to see life as it is and 
covered pretty nearly all of America. 

During my knocking around, I became acquainted 
with Jim Fischer. Jim was a British subject whose 



CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF, 3 

home was in Lancashire, England. We became great 
pals, and I joined him in the publicity game at which 
he made his living. We were in New Orleans soon 
after the war broke out. There Jim received a cable- 
gram ordering him to England to do publicity work 
for the British government. 

"Come along with me," he said, "I can hook you 
on in some way." 

You see, America was being flooded with German 
propaganda at that time. The idea of the British 
government was to start a campaign to counteract what 
Fritz was doing. Jim was to go to England, get the 
stuff to work with and return to America to launch the 
propaganda. 

It didn't take me more than two seconds to decide. 
I went. Perhaps I knew even then in my subcon- 
sciousness that we would both enlist to help fight the 
Hun. At any rate we went over and the first of 
October, 19 14, found me in London, surrounded 
everywhere with the atmosphere of war and prepa- 
ration for war. Turn where I would, the cold piercing 
eye of Kitchener calling Englishmen to the defense of 
their country confronted me. More than half the 
men I met were already wearing the uniform of King 
George. The streets resounded day and night with 
the tramp of men in training. Some were in uniform ; 
some were still in mufti, as the English call civilian 



it KILTIE McCOY 

clothes, with khaki bands on the arm indicating they 
were in the service. 

I used to watch them march by. They were a fine, 
husky, detennined-Iooking lot of men. On their faces 
were written the evidences of the fighting blood, tradi- 
tional with the Anglo-Saxon race. They were every- 
where, training for the battle-fields of France, training 
to meet the Hun, to keep him from the sacred soil 
of England. It appealed to me. I was proud of the 
land of my birth. I could but feel that this was not 
merely a war between Germany, and England and 
France, but a war between the forces of barbarism 
and those of civilization. I began to see that it was 
the duty of every red-blooded man, American or not, 
to get in and do his bit toward the licking of Fritz. 
The intense call within me to help eradicate the Hun 
pest gripped me as it would have gripped you should 
you have been so near to the scene of activities. 

But I was in the publicity game. I was getting 
ready to return to my own country to fight the Hun 
with printer's ink. So was Fischer. We were busy 
each day getting the material for our campaign in the 
United States. We had been been up in Scotland 
viewing the situation there and I had been stinick by 
the sturdiness of the Scots and attracted by the tra- 
ditions which everywhere go with the kilts. 

But it was the little English woman with the measly 



CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF 5 

little white feather who changed all my plans, sent me 
to the trenches of France rather than to the comforts 
of America, to the excitement of the bomber's life 
rather than the tameness of the publicity game. It 
was that little English woman and her little white 
feather who fanned into life the dormant spark that 
had been smoldering within me, who made me a soldier 
of King George rather than a peaceful citizen of the 
United States. 

It was the middle of October, 1914. I was walk- 
ing down Piccadilly one fine morning. I had on a 
new suit of American clothes, and American clothes 
are so different from the English patterns that one 
can never be mistaken. I was an American in ap- 
pearance and in thought, and on this particular morn- 
ing I was feeling especially well satisfied with myself. 

Possibly it was this glow of self-satisfaction which 
made me tliink that all the people who smiled as they 
passed me were admiring my big husky figure and 
well dressed appearance. Some were pleased even to 
the point of laughter. 

So well satisfied was I with myself that as I passed 
a big plate-glass window, I paused to admire the re- 
flection I saw there. But that admiration was choked 
at its birth, I felt the blood mount to my face; shame 
and indignation burned my whole body. There on 
my left shoulder hung a little white feather. It was 



6 KILTIE McCOY 

the same kind of white feather I had seen on many a 
stalwart Englishman in mufti. Often I had laughed 
and with some scorn when I had seen a woman toss 
one of these feathers with burr attached and had seen 
it fasten itself on some young man who ought to have 
been fighting the battles of his country. In those days 
Kitchener was calling for men and these decorations 
were numerous. I had mentally applauded when I had 
seen a woman thus show her contempt for the slacker. 

And now that plate-glass window showed me that 
I had also been decorated. At first I was filled with 
anger. I was an American; anybody could see that 
by my clothes. America was not at war ; America was 
neutral. President Wilson had urged all Americans 
to be neutral in act and neutral in thought. They 
had no right to pin a white feather on me, an Amer- 
ican citizen. 

With some petulance I snatched the slacker sign 
from me, but again I caught that reflection in the 
window. It was a big husky figure I saw imaged 
there. It was the kind of man Kitchener was calling 
for. I had nobody in the world dependent upon me ; I 
had always longed for excitement. The way was 
open for all the excitement I could wish. This was 
a war in which the future safety and peace of the 
world were the stake. America, eventually, would be 
in it — ^must be in it. Why should I not be' in it now_? 



CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF 7 

"I'll call your bluff, John Bull," I said as I moved 
along. "Your women can't pin white feathers on 
American citizens and get away with it. Americans 
never show the white feather. I'll call your bluff. I'll 
join up now." 

Straightway I went back to the hotel and found 
Fischer. 

"Jim, I'm going to enlist," I said abruptly. "Ink 
slinging is not what Fritz needs. He needs bullets 
and I'm going to sling bullets." 

"Suits me," was Jim's prompt reply; "I'll go along 
with you." 

He had had the same idea in mind all the time 
and after a few minutes' conversation we determined to 
go to Scotland and join up with the Kilties. That 
very night we left for Glasgow, arriving there Sunday 
morning. Here we met a lot of other fellows up 
there for the same purpose. Most of them were 
Scotchmen but some were English and some Irish. 

All Sunday we sat around the hotel making our 
plans for the future and our brags as to what we would 
do when at last we got face to face with Fritz. If he 
could have heard what we said about him and the 
threats we made against him he would have crawled 
into his dugouts and called off the war. 

"You'll have a hell of a time enlisting," said one 
of the bunch to me, as we sat talking. 



8 KILTIE McCOY 

"AVhy will I ?" I asked with some petulance. "Guess 
you Englishmen will be glad enough to get a few husky 
Americans to help you out on this job." And I pulled 
myself up and patted my chest with pride. Then 
came the wallop that pretty nearly put me to sleep. 

"They may intern you but they'll never enlist you 
with that name of yours. That *Van' looks too much 
like Von' to be popular in these parts," said the man 
.who had questioned my ability to join up. 

That set me to thinking. I had been having trouble 
with my name ever since I arrived in England. At 
every hotel when I gave my name as "Van Putten,'* 
they promptly produced a long blank for me to fill 
out. That blank called for my full name, birthplace, 
ricimes and birthplaces of my parents and grandpar- 
ents, what my business was and what right I had in 
England anyway. Then after it was all filled out, 
they would look at that "Van" and ask questions 
very apparently bom of a suspicion that it should have 
(been spelled with an "o" instead of with an "a." 

"I'll change my blooming name," I said at 
length. "What shall it be now? I'll leave it up to 
the bunch to christen me.'* 

That pleased everybody and tKey set about giving 
me all sorts of names. 

"You look something like Kid McCoy,"' said one 
sporting man, after a bit. 



CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF 9 

"You've got wind and bluff enough to be P. T. 
Bamum," said another. 

"P. T. McCoy shall be his name," shouted tlie 
crowd in chorus. 

"What shall the T. T.* stand for?" I asked. 

"Patr-r-r-rick Ter-r-r-rance," said a huge Scotch- 
man with a burr under his tongue as big as your fist. 

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" shouted a 
burly Irishman. "We've got to do this thing right." 

With that he disappeared from the room, to return 
presently with a bottle of champagne in his hand. 
Under his direction, the crowd formed a circle, and 
I was made to kneel in the center with my hands 
clasped together. Then the Irishman poured the cham- 
pagne over my head as he said in loud solemn tones : 

"In the presence of God and these witnesses, I 
now christen thee Patrick Terrance McCoy. God 
save the King.'* 

From that moment my old name was forgotten. 
IThey knew me thereafter only as Pat McCoy. 

I went immediately to the hotel office and in- 
formed the clerk I had changed my name, which ne- 
cessitated filling out another long blank that showed 
I had changed my name and why. But that done, I 
was offically registered as Pat McCoy and never again 
heard my former name until I reached Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, three years and a half later. 



;io KILTIE McCOY 

Next morning bright and early, Jim Fischer and 
I went to a recruiting office in Hamilton, a suburb of 
Glasgow, and were enlisted in the Cameronian Scot- 
tish Rifles which later became famous — or infamous — 
as the "Hard Luck Battalion." 

When I was asked my nationality, I drew myself 
up, stuck out my chest and announced boldly : 

"American." 

The recruiting officer calmly laid down his pen, 
looked at me coldly for a minute and then said in 
icy tones: 

"Go take a walk around the block and come back 
here a Canadian." 

Then it dawned on me that since America was still 
neutral, I could not be enlisted as an American. Ac- 
cordingly I walked out, to return a minute later with 
a new nationality and a new place of residence. The 
recruiting officer, as if he had never seen me before, 
began all over. This time when he asked my name 
and residence I responded promptly: 

"Patrick Terrance McCoy, Windsor, Canada." 

Everything was satisfactory now and I was told 
to strip for physical examination. I tipped the scales 
at one hundred and seventy-two pounds and as the 
surgeon finished his examination, he gave me a slap on 
the back that nearly raised a blister and said : 

"I wish I had a few thousand more like you." 



CALLING JOHN BULL'S BLUFF ii 

Then he looked at my teeth and once more I might 
have lost my chance to serve in France, all because of 
pride in my nativity. You know the English people 
have notoriously poor teeth. When they get too bad, 
they have them extracted and false ones put in. When 
the surgeon looked at my teeth and found them filled 
vv^ith gold, he said : 

"You're an American." 

"Right you are," I said. But he was stone deaf 
in that ear and walked away without a word. 

I had passed the examination and was accepted 
for service. They gave me the king's shilling and I 
took the oath of allegiance. Then they sent me away 
to the quartermaster's store house for a uniform. 

I was now a British subject. I had cast away 
everything that man usually holds dear. My Holland 
birth was gone; my American citizenship was gone; 
my name, even, was gone. I was now Patrick Ter- 
rance McCoy, of Windsor, Canada, enlisted in the 
Cameronian Scottish Rifles in the service of His 
Majesty, King George V of England. 

But one thing I had not cast away ; I still possessed 
the pride of American birth and Holland ancestry. I 
had also a little American flag pin. As soon as my 
tunic was issued to me I pinned that flag to it and wore 
it continuously from that day until this. I wore it in 
training; I wore it in the trenches; I wore it in No 



Ct2 KILTIE McCOY 

Man's Land as I lay out there alone and under fire, 
unable to get back to our own trenches and expecting 
death every minute. I wore it on many a bombing 
raid, and I wore it when at the Somme we made Fritz 
feel the might of our arms. More than one German 
may have seen that little American flag at the moment 
he also saw the point of my bayonet lunging toward 
him. I wore it in the hospital and I have it still. It 
was the one tangible all American thing that remained 
with me, and with which I would not and never did 
part. 



II 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 



If I live a thousand years I'll never forget my feel- 
ings as I looked over my new uniform of the Camero- 
nian Scottish Rifles. 

Here was I, a big husky man who had always 
prided himself somewhat on being all man. Yet be- 
fore me on the floor lay skirts, and I was expected to 
put them on. 

Down at dear old 339, in Holland, Michigan, U. 
S. A., I have five sisters. Even so, I had never learned 
the intricacies necessary properly to robe one's self 
with skirts. One can never tell what one will be 
forced to undergo in this good old world. 

I got into my clothes all right until it came to the 
skirts. I looked these over a long time wondering 
whether I was supposed to pull them on over my head 
or to step into them and yank them up. I was ashamed 
to ask anybody for I was ashamed to put them on 
anyway. 

"Why, oh, why," I thought to myself, as I looked 
at that bunch of plaid, "did I ever enlist in a Scotch 
outfit ? Why didn't I join up with an English regiment 
where they wear pants? Gee, but it's going to be 
cold. I can feel my knees freezing already." 

13 



;i4 KILTIE McCOY 

I had more than one mind to cut and run for 
it and get into some regiment where they dressed hke 
men. 

"I suppose I'm in for it and must make good," I 
thought with a sigh, "but I'll gamble somebody'll be 
calling me Percy or Clarence or Molly or some other 
perfectly ladylike name when I get into these skirts — 
if ever I find out how to get into them." 

Then I had a somewhat comforting thought. The 
kilties were usually called "Jock" or "Sandy" or some 
other equally masculine name and when I remembered 
the glorious record of the Scotch Highlanders, I began 
to feel a little less womanish about those skirts. At 
length I got up courage to ask a laddie how to get 
into the things. 

It was Corporal Geordie Freeland who came to 
my aid. Now Geordie was the son of a Scotch Presby- 
terian minister and was himself a theological student 
when he joined up. Corporal Geordie was used to the 
kilts and when I said to him: "How do you 
get into these skirts? Do you pull 'em on over your 
head or step into *em?" he looked at me with real com- 
passion in his eyes and answered: 

"Nither, me bra laddie. Open 'em up in front and 
pull 'em around you." 

Then it was I discovered the kilts did open in 
front and that all I had to do was to "pull them 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 15 

around" me like a coat and buckle them. Then there 
I was all dressed up like a perfect lady. 

But my troubles were not yet ended, however. Be- 
fore me lay a roll that looked like a bandage except that 
it was of wool and of the familiar khaki color. These, 
I discovered, were my puttees and were supposed to 
be wrapped spirally around my legs up to a little below 
the knees. No chance of keeping those knees under 
cover! I called Corporal Geordie again and he put 
them on me, explaining the method in his broad Scotch 
brogue, some of which I almost understood. 

Geordie was my guardian angel, my dictionary and 
my know-it-all during the first two or three days while 
I was learning the ropes. In later weeks we became 
the closest friends. It was Geordie who is responsible 
for my crooked arm, the fact that I am out of the 
service for good and, perhaps, that I am alive. 

It was more than two years after he had shown 
me how to get into my kilts and puttees that he caused 
me to become the target for one of Fritz's snipers. It 
was at Arras, Easter Monday morning, 19 17. We 
were advancing between the third and fourth line 
German trenches. Geordie, then a sergeant, was on 
the extreme left of our company. I was a corporal 
in charge of bombers and on the extreme right. We 
were losing men rapidly and the bombardment was so 
intense that you could hardly hear yourself think. 



j6 KILTIE McCOY 

Geordie, on the left, yelled to the man next on his 
right, ''How's Pat McCoy?" The question was passed 
along up the line of perhaps a hundred and fifty men 
until it reached me. Instead of sending back my 
reply by the same relay method, I stepped out in front 
of the line a bit so I could see Geordie. Then I lifted 
my arm and waved to him to let him know I was still 
alive and still in the game. Hardly had I done so 
when "crack" came a sniper's bullet. It caught me 
just below the left elbow and put me out of the war. 
But I'm still alive, while I hear poor Geordie's ticket 
is up and he's sleeping "somewhere in France." 

But back there in Hamilton and Glasgow we didn't 
have to worry about snipers. The first thing we had 
to do was to learn how to get into our new duds and 
how to use the equipment handed out to us. Geordie 
was my standby on these points. 

I was at last all dolled up in mine. Then it was 
up to me to break out into the public gaze in my new 
scenery including those skirts. I stood in the doorway 
of the billet a long time before I could get up the 
courage to venture forth. I was sure I would be ar- 
rested and I was equally sure my legs would freeze. 
At last I took a long breath, pulled down my kilts a bit 
and stepped out. Everybody was looking at me, I 
knew. I could feel the blood rushing to my face in 
spite of myself. The fact that thousands more were 




L. 



Kiltie McCoy Kilted 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 17 

dressed just like me didn't help at all, all eyes were 
centered on me and me alone. 

Hardly had I stepped forth when a gust of wind 
whistled around my knees. Automatically I grabbed 
my skirts to hold them down. Then everybody 
laughed. I didn't know, as the others did, that there 
are twenty-four yards of cloth in those kilts and that 
they are so heavy that little short of a gale will blow 
them up. I braced and tried to walk as if I had worn 
kilts all my life. But every minute I would uncon- 
sciously reach down and try to pull the skirts over 
my knees. First I would grab at them behind, then 
in front, then on the sides. All the time a raw wind 
was whistling around my bare legs until I shivered 
with cold and nervousness. 

The first time I sat down in those kilts, I acted 
like a little girl trying to pull her skirts down over her 
knees. I pulled mine down but as soon as I straight- 
ened up, the kilts straightened up, too. Many a time 
I said to myself : "I wish I had enlisted in a regiment 
that wears pants." 

But you get used to anything and the novelty of 
the kilts wore off in a day or two. Besides we didn't 
have time to worry about whether we had kilts on or 
not, we were too busy. From five o'clock in the morn- 
ing until nine at night we were on duty, and that duty 
with our big new boots and tender feet gave us all 



j8 KILTIE McCOY 

the worry we could well attend to. You take a lot of 
store clerks, professional men and others unused to out- 
of-door life, load them down with the kind of boots 
we had to wear and drill them sixteen hours a day and 
they have little time to bother over kilts or anything 
else. 

I didn't know anything at all about the military 
game when I joined up, and I'll never forget the mess 
I made of it and the bawling out I got when Sergeant 
Armstrong for the first time yelled at me : "R-r-right 
tur-r-rn," and I just naturally turned around. 

For two weeks we did nothing but drill without 
arms, polish buttons and equipment and then be in- 
spected and bawled out. You see, the English army 
way of inculcating the idea of discipline is to demand 
cleanliness of person and cleanliness of equipment car- 
ried to the extreme, with frequent inspections and fines 
if you fail to pass satisfactorily. Boots are black and 
must be polished. Buttons are bright and must be 
kept so. Cap badges are shining and must be kept 
shining. You must be shaved daily. Your hair must 
be cut according to regulation and frequently. 

I got mine early. A veteran of many years' service 
in the English army quietly gave me the secret of a 
quick and easy polish for my cap badge. He confiden- 
tially informed me that if I would smear it with 
Brasso, known as "The soldier's friend," and then place 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 19 

it over a gas-jet until the paste had burned in, all I had 
then to do was to dust it off and I'd have a bright and 
shining cap badge. I fell for it. When I went out 
for inspection soon after, my cap badge was perfectly 
black, and I knew I was in for it. The only question 
in my mind was how heavy my fine would be and what 
particular part of the billets I would have the honor 
of scrubbing. 

I stood stiffly at attention as Captain Hay, who 
long since has clicked it, passed down the line inspect- 
ing. He paused in front of me, sized me up and down 
with a keen eye. His gaze fell upon that cap badge 
and stopped right there : 

"What's the matter wi' yer cap badge?" he de- 
manded coldly. "Did yer use cherry black on it this 
mornin' ?" 

*T was " I began. 

"Step oot," bawled the sergeant, tO' add to my 
confusion, for when a soldier in the British army is 
spoken to by an officer and replies, he must step smartly 
two paces to the front. Promptly I did so and stood 
all alone out in front of the entire company, stuttering 
like a schoolboy and trying to present some sort of 
alibi. 

Then I told him what had happened and how I 
came to try the gas-jet method of polishing my ^ap 
badge. 



20 KILTIE McCOY 

"That's a lazy man's way," came the sharp re- 
sponse. "I'll give you an order for a new cap badge 
and hereafter you polish it without the aid of the gas- 
jet." 

He let me off easy — much easier than he did an 
American pal of mine, for there were five of us in 
that battalion. The English army officer is extremely 
lussy about the heels of your boots. If they are not 
well polished you are certain to get yours, good and 
plenty. Now my American pal had neglected to polish 
his heels. The officer had passed down the front of 
the line and was returning in the rear looking for 
unpolished heels. 

He paused behind my friend. 

"What's the matter with those heels?" he de- 
manded severely. 

Then it was the Yankee smart Alec cropped out 
and all to the woe of the Yank. 

"Sir, a good soldier never looks behind," he said. 

"Take his name, Sergeant," said the captain. 
"We'll give him seven days in billet, without pay, to 
find out whether a good soldier ever looks behind." 

When 3^ou're working for a shilling a day, you 
need all you can get and a seven davs' fine puts a 
severe crimp in one's rating in Dun's. 

The incident of the cap badge had not taught me 
my lesson, however. I guess I was not upholding 
the Yankee reputation for being smart. 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 21 

Every article in your kit must be arranged in a 
certain order and a certain manner. Our knives, forks, 
spoons, razors, tooth-brushes, etc., must always be 
placed in just that order. I had again taken the 
advice of an old-timer and my kit was on the ground 
open for inspection with the position of the knife 
and fork reversed. I had been careful in arranging 
my things and was mentally pluming myself on the 
job. 

Captain Hay came down the line with his little 
cane. He paused and looked at my kit critically. 

"What's that fork doing there?" he said sharply, 
and with a sweep of his cane he mussed up all my 
things and the sergeant took my name. 

For a time we put it over on the officers in one 
respect, but the first man caught may be scrubbing 
floors yet for all I know. It was required that our kits 
should be folded square and neat. Now this is not 
the easiest thing to do when you have all your junk 
to stow in it So we contrived a plan to leave out 
all the stuff and put in the place of it a pillow or a 
square paste-board box. By this means we were able 
to present the neatest sort of kit for inspection pur- 
poses and at the same time have no load upon our 
backs. 

But one day Captain Hay stopped behind Fred 
Thompson. Thompson had rather overdone the 
squareness and neatness. 



22 KILTIE McCOY 

"There's a perfect kit," said the captain, and Thomp- 
son immediately began seeing visions of Victoria 
crosses and marshal's batons and all sorts of things. 

But Captain Hay struck the kit with his knuckle. 
It gave forth a hollow boom. Then we all knew it 
had happened and began thinking of scrubbing brushes 
and no pay. 

"Ah, ha. So that's it, is it?" sneered the captain. 
"What have you got in that kit?" 

"My kit, sir," responded Thompson, for he was 
an old-timer and had nerve. 

"Step oot," roared the sergeant, and Thompson 
promptly stepped forward his two paces. 

"We'll have kit inspection immediately," said the 
captain. 

In another moment all the kits were open on the 
ground and thirty-two of them, including my own, 
gave up paste-board boxes, pillows and other contriv- 
ances for making nice-looking kits without weight. 
Oh, we did a fine turn of scrubbing for that, and after- 
ward the kits were opened every day for inspection. 

We were forever polishing boots and buttons and 
cap badges and standing at attention for inspection. 
We learned over in France that it was not required to 
polish except when detailed for guard duty at head- 
quarters. Accordingly our yearning for the trenches 
was accentuated each day. We were willing to take 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 23 

chances with shells and bullets if only to escape that 
eternal polishing. 

Inspections came frequently from the very first, 
inspections by our own officers and by general officers 
who came for the purpose. Not long after we had 
begun training we were inspected by King George, and 
let me tell you something right here. I never was more 
willing to die than I was for that little man who occu- 
pies the throne of England and the British Empire. 
I'm proud, too, that I was able to do my bit for him, 
for he is the greatest little sportsman and gentleman 
in the world. 

A short time before the king inspected us we were 
inspected by a general. He was due to arrive at a 
certain time and according to the British army regu- 
lations we were on the parade fully equipped, our ranks 
dressed straight as a string and at attention some min- 
utes before the general was expected. For two hours 
we stood there, stiff as pokers, unable to relax even 
a little. The general was late. We were soft then, 
too, and that made the tension that much harder to 
bear. I never ached so in my life and I thought I 
never would get activity into my muscles again. 

And when at last he came, we presented arms and 
he rode by on his horse, saluted the colonel and passed 
on without giving us a single look or acknowledging 
our salute. 



24 KILTIE McCOY 

Soon after this experience it was announced that 
the king was coming. With the remembrance of that 
other inspection still in our minds and muscles we be- 
gan to grouse. Naturally I, an American, didn't have 
much use for that king job anyway and under the 
conditions most of the men in the battalion felt pretty 
much the same way about it. 

So we sat around and polished buttons and boots 
and cap badges and rifles and cussed the kaiser, the 
war, the king and everybody else. If the general had 
been two hours late of course the king would exercise 
his divine prerogative and be at least four hours late. 
And if the general didn't notice us standing there at 
attention and half dead waiting for him, we had reason 
to expect the king would probably not even notice the 
colonel. 

So we went out to the parade feeling anything but 
happy and not overly loyal toward King George. He 
was just a nuisance to us that morning. He was due 
to arrive at eleven a. m. We had been properly 
formed, our lines carefully dressed and had just taken 
our proper positions when, three minutes before the 
hour, he came upon the field. 

I was in the front rank and had a good chance to 
see him. I had all sorts of ideas about what kings 
looked like but what I saw was a small, slight, unim- 
pressive-looking man. There were no ermine robes 
about him, no lackeys fanning him, nobody kneeling in 



FROM MUFTI TO KILTS 25 

front of him. He was clad in a field uniform, just 
like the most ordinary English Tommy. He was some- 
what stooped and looked just about as human and 
commonplace as any man could. 

We were standing stiffly at attention when he 
walked upon the field. The colonel promptly ordered: 
"Present arms," and we executed it. 

Did King George recognize us? Bet your life he 
did! He saluted the colonel, faced the battalion and 
smartly saluted the men. Then he spoke to the colonel 
and what do you think King George of England said: 

"Have the men stand at ease, Colonel." 

In that moment, George V of England had won 
the hearts of the Cameronian Scottish Rifles. But that 
was not all. He personally told the men they might 
smoke if they desired while he was making the inspec- 
tion. Do you think a man "Ht up" ? Not on your life ! 
Every man there, whatever his feelings might have 
been before, had too much respect for that little man 
to smoke while he was making an inspection. 

The king passed to the right of the line, and walk- 
ing close up to the first man, stopped and said : 

"You're a fine looking body of men. Are you be- 
ing well cared for ?" 

You could see that soldier grow as he replied to 
his sovereign. And do you think he would have made 
a complaint? Not much. 

Then the king passed down the front of the line. 



26 KILTIE McCOY 

He stopped at about every fourth or fifth man and 
talked with him personally. He stopped in front of 
the man next on my right, I was always sore because 
he missed me. 

"Are you well cared for?" he asked. *'How about 
your boots? Remember a soldier must have good 
boots, a good rifle and plenty of wholesome food. Are 
you getting all these things?" 

I could feel that man swell up as he responded: 

"Sir, yes, sir. Your Majesty." 

As His Majesty walked along the line each man 
standing at ease, came to attention and so remained 
until the king had passed to the second man beyond 
him. 

His Majesty looked over every man in the line and 
not until he had finished his inspection were we once 
more brought to attention to present arms in salute. 
The king saluted the colonel and again turned to salute 
us. I tell you he is the gamest little man in the world 
and when that battalion cut loose a cheer for him, if 
there was anybody who yelled any louder than I, it 
was because he had stronger lungs for I could say and 
still can say, "God save King George," and mean it 
with all my heart. 



Ill 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 

"Fall in." 

The command was whispered in the darkness. 

"No smoking and no talking." 

This admonition was also given in a whisper. 

"The wind is whistHng Yankee Doodle between 
my knees," I mumbled, as a cold gust caught me. 

"Make it whistle TJi Bonnie Braes o' Scotland," 
said a big Scotchman near me. 

"Silence," bawled somebody from out the dark- 
ness in tones that could be heard all over the British 
Isles. 

"Forr-r-red," came the whispered command. 

"Away we marched into the darkness, out of the 
billets and over to the beautiful estate of Lord Hamil- 
ton. It was so dark I could not see even my next man, 
for since the Zeps first raided England few lights are 
burned and these are carefully shaded. 

Down along the road and through the beautiful 
woods of this fine old estate we tramped. The liquid 
mud sloshed around our feet and we had visions of 
boots to polish in the morning. 

Somebody cursed gently. 

"Silence, there," roared out of the darkness. 
27 



28 KILTIE AIcCOY 

I reached out my hand to touch my next man. He 
was not there. I knew where he was. Up there in 
the angles of the old castle were the pretty maids of 
Lord Hamilton's household waiting for their soldier 
lovers. 

We were in line advancing through the woods. 

"Lie down," came the whispered order. 

Around each of us were twenty-four yards of kilts, 
beneath us was mud and then more mud. 

Lie down, and then spend all day to-morrow scrub- 
bing kilts and ironing the pleats ? Not much. I squat- 
ted on my knees, holding my kilts up around me; and 
everybody else did the same. 

"Lie down," bawled Colonel Dykes, a little fellow 
about sixty years old but with more pep than most of 
us youngsters had. "You're under fire." 

We couldn't see any shells so nobody worried. 

A hand caught me in the back of the head. With 
a shove it sent me sprawling flat upon my face, full 
length into the soft mud. 

"Lie down. You'll go down quick enough when 
Fritz gets to tossing real shells at you," said a voice 
from the dark; and one man after another was pushed 
upon his face into the ooze. 

I was down. My kilts were smeared. I had an 
all day's job ahead of me washing and ironing that 
twenty-four yards of plaid and cleaning all the rest of 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 29 

my equipment. It was not necessary for anybody to 
tell me to lie still. I lay there feeling the cold wet 
mud soak into my clothing and smear over my bare 
legs. 

From somewhere a star shell went up. It looked 
like a sky-rocket left over from the first Fourth of 
July. The star shells we had when we first entered the 
war were so weak in comparison with those of the 
Germans that when we would send one up, Fritz used 
to light matches and hold them up above the parapet 
of his trenches in derision. 

"Looks like Fourth of July," I said as I watched 
it. 

"Shut up, you blooming Yank," said an English- 
man next me as he reached over and kicked me. 

"Fix bayonets," was the whispered order. We 
rolled over on our right sides in order to draw and fix 
the mud-covered bayonets. 

Then came the order to move forward, crawling 
through the mud on our bellies. We moved. That is, 
most of us did. Some lay still there on the ground. 
They were not dead nor even theoretically wounded. 
A gentle snore from one showed what was the matter 
with all. A prodding with a mud-covered boot brought 
all to life in course of time. 

So we crept forward, not knowing where we were 
going nor why. But we went. 



30 KILTIE McCOY 

"Charge!" bellowed the colonel; and with a yell 
we were up and rushing forward upon an unknown, 
unseen and purely mythical enemy located in an un- 
known position, and then it was all over. 

Back to the billets we marched except those who 
had maneuvered out of the ranks and had gone home 
to sleep in warm soft beds and to sneak back into bil- 
lets just before dawn in the morning. 

It was a night maneuver, the kind we had fre- 
quently, in which we learned a vast number of things 
that we promptly unlearned as soon as we reached 
France and the real stuff. 

It was good to get out of our wet and muddy 
clothes even if we couldn't forget that they must be 
washed in the morning. But the night was not over 
yet. 

Hardly had we fallen asleep when we were turned 
out in a hurry again. Into those cold, wet, muddy 
clothes we climbed as fast as we could and turned out 
under arms. 

"What's it all about ?" we shivered. 

"Zep raid," was the information we got. 

All eyes were turned heavenward and all ears were 
strained to catch the whir of a motor or the explosion 
of a bomb. We could see nothing. We could hear 
nothing. Next day we found out why. The raid 
was over London, some two hundred and fifty miles 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 31 

away, but it was orders that whenever a raid was on, 
the armed forces all over the British Isles must be 
turned out ready for eventualities. So we stood in 
the ranks a couple of hours more, cold and ugly — 
while the nearest excitement there was was down in 
London. 

Next day we spent scrubbing, polishing and getting 
cleaned up and being inspected. That is, we occupied 
in this work all the time we had between the regular 
grind of drills. 

That was only one kind of night maneuver. We 
had many. Perhaps the most heartbreaking kind was 
trench digging. Armed with picks and shovels we 
would go over to Lord Hamilton's estate and there in 
the darkness dig trenches. Next morning we would be 
marched back to look at our handiwork and — to fill 
them up again. We would find some of the trenches 
three feet deep and some of them only six inches. I 
noticed after we got into France, that the fellows who 
dug only six inches in Blighty could dig six feet in 
half the time when they had Fritz and shrapnel to 
cheer them on. 

However, those six-inch trenches were always 
popular with us on the morning after. It was easy to 
fill them up while it took a lot of backache and agony 
of blistered hands to fill one three feet deep. And 
then there were the sand-bags! At night we filled 



32 KILTIE McCOY 

hundreds of them to build our parapets. In the morn- 
ing we emptied them again. 

One day was pretty much Hke every other during 
those six months in the training camp. 

At five A. M. reveille was sounded, and we had 
biscuits and tea. 

At five-thirty we began our hour of Swedish drill. 

Six-thirty we were dismissed. 

Seven a. m. breakfast. This almost always con- 
sisted of bread, jam, either bacon or porridge without 
sugar, and tea. At breakfast, too, the English idea 
of a joke was perpetrated for the first time in the day. 

Under the British army regulations, it is required 
that at each meal the men shall be asked it they have 
any complaints to make. The orderly officer of the 
day always came in, took his place at the end of each 
table and in loud voice demanded : 

'"Any complaints?" 

The orderly of the platoon addressed always 
jumped to his feet, stood at attention and we saw to 
it that he always had complaints to make. 

"Sir, yes, sir," he would say, "we had not enough 
bacon." 

"I'll see what can be done about it," was the stereo- 
typed reply of the officer, as he passed on to the next 
table. But although we lay awake nights thinking of 
complaints to make, it was apparent the officer had 
mighty little influence with the powers-that-be for we 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT Z3 

never got results from his promise to "see Avhat could 
be done about it." 

Breakfast over, yvQ had time for a quick shave and 
to polish our boots and buttons. 

At nine a. m. we fell in for inspection and woe be 
to the man who had failed to do a good job of polish- 
ing. We were paid a shilling a day for our service 
and the regulations require that no man shall receive 
less than one shilling a week. But it was perfectly 
easy to fine a man every cent of his pay except that 
one regulation shilling a week. 

Inspection over, we were drilled. The captain 
would take a hand at it until he was tired, then he 
would command : *'Carry on, Sergeant," and the ser- 
geant-major would take up the burden. Perhaps the 
lieutenants would like to try it, and so they relayed 
on us while we had to stand it all. 

At twelve noon we would have battalion parade and 
then be dismissed. But that dismissing business fre- 
quently cut short our dinner hour. In the British 
army when the battalion is dismissed, each man turns 
to the right, salutes smartly, and then falls out. It 
w^as a mighty blind officer, I soon learned, who couldn't 
find some Jock down the line who didn't turn or that 
didn't salute to suit him and so he would keep us turn- 
ing and saluting fifteen or twenty times before, at 
last, we were allowed to fall out. 

At twelve-thirty w^e dined. This consisted of bis- 



34 KILTIE McCOY 

cuits — and by biscuits I mean hardtack — stew, rice or 
sago pudding. 

At two p. M. we were at it again. 

This time we must march out to the field where we 
were taught bayonet fighting. We kept it up until 
four-thirty, including a short route march every day 
and a longer one of from six to eight miles about twice 
a week. 

At four-thirty we had a short rest and time to 
smoke. Then we marched back to billets in parade 
order and had just time to prepare for supper which 
iconsisted of bread, usually cold meat, jam and more 
tea. Never any coffee. Indeed it was impossible to 
get a cup of good American coffee in Scotland. 
Fischer and I tried it many a time but never got any- 
tliing fit to drink. 

Supper over, we were drilled again for an hour, 
this time by the colonel. If we had no night maneuver, 
we were supposed to be in bed at nine o'clock. At first 
this was the most welcome regulation on the book, but 
when we got hardened a bit, it went against the grain. 
In Scotland the evenings are very long and it is rarely 
dark before ten, but we, a bunch of big huskies, were 
tucked in bed while it was yet daylight. 

We had been training only about a month when I 
was made a corporal. I was put to training the men 
in Swedish drill and bayonet fighting. I was one of the 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 35 

biggest men in the battalion except for a few Scotch 
sheep herders who came down from the Highlands. 
These were the biggest and finest specimens of men I 
ever saw. Many of them were six feet, six and seven 
inches in height, and tougher than hickory. 

They were a game lot, too ; they never knew what 
"quit" meant. In teaching bayonet fighting we went 
through all the movements we thought we would be 
going through if attacking a German trench. We had 
dummies in front of the trenches, in the trenches and 
back of the trench. We would rush forward, look 
as fierce as we could, cuss if necessary to show hate, 
give a long point at the dummy in front, withdraw, 
rush forward yelling, leap down into the trench, stab- 
bing a standing dummy as we went, stick the dummy 
lying prone in the trench, lift ourselves out and attack 
other dummies supposed to be Germans advancing to 
the relief of those in the trenches. It was hard work 
and quite realistic as far as we then knew. 

I noticed one day that one of these big Scotchmen, 
a fellow named Livingston, was pretty slow getting 
up out of a trench after he had done his work, 

"What's the matter there, Livingston?" I yelled. 
"What makes you so slow getting out of that trench ?" 

"I stuck my foot," he called back, and hobbled 
along. 

I looked at his foot. The blood was spurting from 



36 KILTIE McCOY 

it, yet he kept on going. I ran up to him and ques- 
tioned him about it. I found that in jumping into the 
trench he had plunged his bayonet clear through his 
foot, cutting veins, chords and bones. I ordered him 
to billet but he refused to go. I called a couple of men 
to carry him in but the big chap insisted he could walk 
and he did walk in that condition all the way to the 
hospital. Poor chap! He was unable to go to France 
when the rest of us went, and the man who had re^ 
fused to quit with a wound that crippled him for life, 
cried like a baby when we went away and left him. 

But my new honors did not bring unadulterated 
pleasure. Right soon after I had taken up the work, I 
was forced to send Fischer, my best friend and pal, to 
the guard room. Poor old pal ! Somewhere over on 
the Somme front his body is buried minus his head, 
which a shell swept away. But I want to tell you the 
kind of fellow he was. 

I had a squad out giving them bayonet drill. In 
that squad was Fischer. He was feeling a little 
grouchy that day perhaps and continually talked in the 
ranks. Twice I told him to keep still but he kept it up. 

"Fischer, cut that talking in ranks," I commanded 
him. 

*T won't if I don't want to," he said. "Nobody can 
make me either." 

*T can make you shut up and I will," I answered. 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 37 

"Nobody can make me shut up. You can't, nor the 
colonel can't. The king can't either," he growled. 

Immediately I detailed two men and the lance cor- 
poral to take my best pal to the guard room, for it was 
a case of show-down now. 

After drill as I was passing the guard room, Mickie 
Burns, the sergeant of the guard on duty, said to me: 

"What about Fischer, Pat? I haven't 'crimed' 
him yet. You don't want me to do that, do you?" 

"I don't care what you do to him," I answered, for 
I was a bit ugly. 

"Oh, Pat," said Burns, "go in and see him. He 
wants to see you." 

After a little pleading I went in. 

"Pat," said Fischer, coming up to me, "I'm not 
asking you not to 'crime' me. I deserve that and all 
the punishment they may give me. I just want to 
apologize to you, old pal, for taking advantage of our 
friendship, I'll admit I did it intentionally because I 
thought you wouldn't do anything. I was wrong both 
ways. What I ask of you now is to let me apologize 
to the whole squad as soon as I get out of this." 

"Go on! Get out of here," I said. "Beat it quick 
before I 'crime' you." 

"I don't want to get out," said Jim. "I've got 
something coming to me and that's all right, but I 
want to square myself with you." 



38 KILTIE McCOY 

"Beat it," I said. "I don't want to 'crime' you. 
Get on out of here quick." 

Well, he left but he went to every other man in that 
squad and apologized to each one individually. That's 
the thing that makes soldiers stick; that's what makes 
men pals for life; that's what makes men weep and 
swear and fight like mad men when a good pal gets his 
from Fritz. 

Always during that long winter we were yearning 
more and more for France and the excitement we had 
anticipated when we joined up. The constant round 
of routine irked. We read of the big fights over there. 
We wanted to do our share in them. Rumor was 
always afloat. Every day, almost, came the report that 
within a week we would surely be on our way. We 
were hard as nails now and a fine-looking body of 
fighting men. From the mines, the stores, the offices 
and from the Highlands they had come to make up our 
battalion of a thousand men. Many of these were 
stoop-shouldered when they joined up, but back of 
them was the sturdy Scotch and English and Irish 
blood. The out-of-door life, the hard training and all, 
had straightened up every last man. Now we were 
one thousand square-shouldered, full-chested lads, 
tough and strong and ready for the hardest kind of 
work. We wanted to be over there. We knew we 
would be able to make the name of our battalion glori- 
ous. 



THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT 39 

But the winter dragged along. Rumor after rumor 
collapsed into nothing but rumor. We were getting 
surly when one day it was announced the king was 
coming to inspect us again. That meant, could mean, 
only one thing: we were soon to go. But the king 
would find a different body of men now from what he 
had seen the first time he came. He would find us 
different physically, different mentally. He would find 
us anxious to see him, ready to stand at attention as 
long as he might desire, loyal to him, enthusiastic for 
him and ready to die for him. 

He came in just the same prompt and democratic 
manner as before. He spoke to many of the men in 
ranks and then stood out in front of us and made us a 
speech. 

"This is a war," he said, "in which civilization is 
fighting against the forces of barbarism. It is not a 
war of our seeking. It is a war that has been thrust 
upon the world by a people gone military mad. The 
Germans have invaded Belgium, a weak and peaceful 
neighbor. You have read of the unnamable atroci- 
ties which have been perpetrated there. You men 
are going out to fight the battles of the civilized world. 
You and all the forces of the empire have a tradition 
to uphold. I know you will live up to every tradition 
of the Anglo-Saxon race. I hope you will all come 
back, although I know some of you will not. Some of 



40 KILTIE McCOY 

you must give your lives in this cause, but in giving 
your greatest gift, remember you are giving it in the 
cause of the world and in the cause of future genera- 
tions. Your country will reverence and honor you for 
it. Posterity will render you homage. Good-by and 
may God bless and keep you." 

He saluted smartly and turned away. From a 
thousand throats burst a great cheer, a cheer in which 
the hearts of one thousand British soldiers were 
joined in love for the little man who occupies the 
English throne. 

A few days later we were told we could no longer 
leave the billets. At last we were to go, at last we 
were to leave dear old Blighty and the wives and chil- 
dren and mothers and fathers and sweethearts and 
friends we had there. We were going into the great 
war, into the unknown, "somewhere in France." 



IV 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 



I WAS lonesome. Why shouldn't I be ? 

We were confined to billets. We knew that at last 
we were going. 

I, alone of the one thousand men constituting 
that battalion, had no wife, no child, no mother, no 
father, no sweetheart, no one who cared. I was utter- 
ly alone. IMore than three thousand miles, much of it 
Atlantic Ocean, separated me from anybody who cared 
whether I went or whether I came back. Indeed, even 
my family back in Holland, Michigan, didn't know I 
was going. I had written to them that I had enlisted 
but I had also told them of my appointment as instruct- 
or and had left the idea that I was to remain in Scot- 
land to drill recruits. So I had not even a telepathic 
connection with my friends and relatives. I was just 
alone. 

All my pals were daily, almost hourly, receiving 
parcels from their loved ones in the city. All sorts of 
things for their comfort and happiness came through, 
but not one parcel ever came in for me. I was an 
American in a strange land with only such casual 
friends as I had made during our period of training 
and most of these were my comrades in arms. 

41 



42 KILTIE McCOY 

Lonesome? I never was so lonesome in my life. 
I was not only lonesome, but I felt an outcast. Perhaps 
just a little bitterness crept into my heart, too. I was 
going away to the battle-field. Perhaps I was going 
to an unknown grave. I was going to face all the 
dangers which that greatest of all wars produce. The 
chances were against my coming back. 

American and a stranger though I might be, I was 
still going out to fight, perhaps to die, for England. 
I was going to do my bit just as courageously and just 
as loyally as if I had been born under the flag I was 
now to fight under. Was I not entitled to a little recog- 
nition in these hours when we were preparing to go 
into the unknown? Yet, as I turned my face toward 
France and the trenches, nobody came to wish me God- 
speed or a safe return. 

It was in the evening of March 6, 19 15, when we 
were finally turned out fully equipped and prepared to 
go. The trains were ready for us, the crowds were 
packed into the streets waiting for us. We were drawn 
up on the parade at Hamilton. The Duke of Hamil- 
ton, the Lord Mayor of Hamilton and other civil and 
military officials addressed us. Then we marched out 
on our way to the station, the first leg on our journey 
to the trenches. 

At the head of our column were two big bands of 
pipes, and a bugle corps. The bugle corps consisted of 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 43 

some forty boys of from fifteen to eighteen years of 
age, led by an old bugler-major, too old for active 
service. When the pipes would cease their skirl, the 
bugles would take it up until the air itself seemed to 
thrill with the blare. 

The whole country-side had turned out to see us go. 
The great crowd surged into the streets and packed so 
densely that frequently we were off our feet and were 
being borne along by the mass. The skirl of the pipes, 
the blare of the bugles, the cheers of the crowd made 
the most thrilling scene I have ever known. From all 
sides civilians clapped us on the back as we struggled 
along. Cigarettes, bottles, parcels of all sorts were 
thrust into our hands and pockets. Every now and 
then a woman recognizing her husband, son or sweet- 
heart would break through the ranks and throw her 
arms around her loved one. How we ever reached 
the station, I do not know. But at last we were there 
and the gates closed behind us. That gave us a little 
free way and a chance to breathe. 

We stowed our packs into the carriages assigned 
us and then once more the gates were opened. Those 
having relatives in the battalion had previously been 
given tickets which admitted them within the gates, 
so for an hour they came to say their last farewells. 

Women and children stood in a sad but admiring 
group around some big Scotchman, the husband and 



44 KILTIE McCOY 

fatKer. But unlike our American farewells, there was 
little hugging or kissing. The women and cliildren 
would pat the soldier gently, while the big tears would 
stream down their faces and they would try to talk 
calmly and hopefully. And the brawny Scot would 
place his hands on the shoulders of those loved ones 
and calmly and quietly say: "Never mind. It's all 
right. I'll be back soon." 

Two hours I stood there sadly watching all this. 
Nobody noticed me. I wondered what I would have 
done had my own loved ones been there to say farewell 
to me. Sometimes I was glad they were not there for I 
doubted if I could have been as sturdily undemonstra- 
tive as these Scotchmen were. 

At last came the whistle and the order to get on 
board. The pipes began to play once more as we clam- 
bered into the carriages. Big Billy Watt, who was not 
going with us, was blowing his best. Aiild Lang Syne 
was the tune. 

''Should auld acquaintance be forgot." 

Tears were shining In Billy's eyes. 

"And never brought to mind." 

The tears were now running down Billy's cheeks. 
Faster and faster they flowed. Billy took the pipes 
from his mouth and wept like a child. 

Another big Scotchman next Billy was weeping too. 
Then he quit, and one after anotlier the pipers in that 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 45 

big band gave up until the music at last died away in 
a wail from a single lonely pipe. 

I had been watching Billy and the words to his 
tune were running through my mind. My heart was 
heavy. All around me the last farewells were being 
said, but nobody was saying good-by to me. I was just 
about to step into the carriage when a fine-looking 
young Scotch girl came up to me. "Good-by," she said, 
and quicker than thought she planted a ki'ss on my 
mouth. Then with a smile she was gone. 

I was not forgotten after all. I had never seen the 
girl before, but somewhere in that crowd she had seen 
me standing sadly alone when suddenly to her big 
Scotch heart had come the determination that no man 
should go away on that train without some one to wish 
him well I swung on board that train with a lighter 
heart than I had had in hours. I was not forgotten in 
all the world. God bless that lassie, whoever she was ! 

I still had another well-wisher, too, but I didn't 
know it until just as the train was about to move. 
Sergeant-Major Dallard of our battalion was not going 
out with us. He was all soldier and he was left behind 
to train recruits. He came out with the second bunch, 
however, and was killed soon after going into the firing 
line. Dallard had never shown any particular interest 
in me nor had I counted him as any especial friend, 
but just before we pulled out of the station he came 



46 KILTIE McCOY 

into the carriage calling: "Where's Pat McCoy?" 
When he had found me he shook hands most heartily 
and as the tears streamed down his cheeks he said : 
"I'm sorry yet happy to see you go, Pat." In my hand 
he left a pound note. 

The train moved. We were on our w^ay. Behind 
us were the hills and the heather so dear to most of the 
men in our battalion. Behind us were the loved ones, 
the wives and the children whom many a man would 
never see again. Before us were the trenches and 
the battle-fields of France, before us was the glorious 
death for flag and country, before us was the unknown. 
We were going forward eagerly, going to the strife 
where only four weeks later more than half our thou- 
sand splendid men gave up their lives. 

It was interesting to see the different ways in which 
the different men were affected. Some were sitting 
quietly in their seats, dreaming of those left behind, 
imagining as far as possible what the future might 
hold in store. Some were partaking liberally from 
the bottles which had been slipped to them on the march 
to the station. From these they were gaining a false 
hilarity, courage, forgetfulness. Some were filled with 
excitement and buzzed about aimlessly, talking almost 
hysterically. Jim Fischer and I decided to take an ac- 
count of our financial condition. We were going to 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 47 

London and France, we might want to spend a little 
before another pay-day came around. We found that 
between us we had four pounds or the equivalent of 
twenty dollars in American money. This sum must 
last us until either the paymaster or Fritz got to us. 

Nobody slept on board that train that night. 
Everybody was too excited. Then at every station the 
Red Cross handed us cigarettes, sandwiches and tea. 
Dawn was breaking when we rolled into Euston 
Station in London. Immediately we were turned out 
and lined up at the long troughs to wash. At every 
station they had constructed sinks, like our American 
horse troughs, so that an entire battalion of troops 
could wash up in a half-hour's time. As soon as Ave 
had completed our ablutions, we polished boots and 
buttons and fell in for inspection. At ten a. m. we 
started on our march across London to Victoria Sta- 
tion. 

That was a wonderful march. Everywhere the 
streets were crowded. From one station to the other 
we passed between solid walls of humanity. The crowd 
showered us with flowers, cigarettes, fruits, everything 
imaginable, and always from the crowd came shouts 
of "Hello, Jock. Good luck, Jock." 

We reached the big yard at Victoria Station and 
fell out for rest and for dinner. And here it was 



48 KILTIE McCOY 

announced that at two o'clock we would be Inspected 
by the great Kitchener, so each of us looked himself 
over with care, touched up a dull button here and there, 
and made ourselves as near perfect as we could. 

We were all anxious to see Kitchener, and wanted 
to look our very best for him. All Scotland was as 
proud of him as if he had been a Scotchman, and we 
wanted him to be proud of us, too. 

At one p. M. we fell in and were given a: most 
rigid Inspection by the colonel. Xhls was scarcely over 
when the pipes began playing the familiar Loch Lo- 
mond. We knew what that meant. Kitchener was 
here! 

We were Instantly on edge for his appearance. 
The pipes quit and the bugles took up the salute. 

"Battalion, 'shun!" roared the colonel, and we 
snapped into position. 

"Battalion, shoulder arms! Battalion, present 
arms," followed In quick succession. 

A group of men approached — some fifteen or six- 
teen In all. At the head of them strode a tall, giant- 
shouldered but slim-walsted man. He was squarely 
erect and walked with an exact military stride. Great 
shaggy eyebrows gave him an especially stem appear- 
ance while his heavy mustache accentuated his iron 
jaw. He was powerful both In physical and mental 
appearance. His lips were hard set, and even as he 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 49 

entered the square at some distance from us we all 
seemed to feel his eyes boring into our most secret 
hearts and minds. 

It was Kitchener, the Kitchener whose eyes had 
challenged me ever since I first set foot on English 
soil. It was the Kitchener who by a look had caused 
Britons to spring to arms. It was the Kitchener of 
Khartoum, the Kitchener whom the British Empire 
worshipped and trusted, the Kitchener who as a sol- 
dier was the daddy of us all. He was polished from 
head to foot, and his heels were polished also. 

Followed by his staff he walked smartly up to the 
colonel and returned the salute. Then he passed down 
the line and every man of us was given a look-over we 
never shall forget. As he passed along, Kitchener 
seemed to stoop forward slightly, to squint up his eyes 
and then bore holes through you. He had the most 
piercing eyes I ever saw. As he looked me over I 
could tell just where his gaze was resting even though 
my eyes were straight ahead. When Kitchener looked 
at my belt, I could feel it in my stomach and when he 
passed around behind us, I could tell when he was 
looking at the heels of my boots. 

As Kitchener marched down the line he spoke to 
several of the men. I was wondering if perhaps he 
might not speak to me or was I always to be unlucky 
in the presence of the great? He passed me with a 



50 KILTIE McCOY 

searching look. I had lost again. No. He had 
stopped before the next man beyond me and was glanc- 
ing back. I felt his eyes pass over me and I felt them 
stop when they reached my left breast. There was my 
little American flag. It had stopped the great Kitch- 
ener. 

Now he would speak. But what would he say? 
It was against regulations that I should have any pin 
on my tunic. I had worn my little flag always and 
nobody had ever forbidden me. To-day, however, I 
was standing under the withering gaze of Kitchener 
who was all soldier and no sentiment. My uniform 
was not correct. I could feel Kitchener's eyes burn on 
that little flag, the flag of a nation not yet in the war. 
I had a vision of Pat McCoy standing out in front of 
the whole battalion to be reprimanded by Lord 
Kitchener. I was beginning to sweat and through my 
mind passed all sorts of answers to questions I ex- 
pected him to ask. Should I tell him I was an Ameri- 
can and proud of it, and proud of my flag, or should 
I humbly remove my colors and take whatever punish- 
ment might be inflicted ? 

Kitchener's mouth opened. I was sweating but 
I had set my jaw for the battle. It came at last. 

"Do your boots fit?" 

For an instant I could not speak. I was ready to 
reply to another question. I know my face must have 




CopuTlght bu Western Xews paper Union Photo Service 
Kitchener of Khartoum 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 51 

softened almost to a grin as I recovered my senses and 
replied smartly: 

*'Sir, yes, sir." 

Kitchener passed on. He made no remark about 
my excess decoration. Perhaps he even then saw into 
the future and knew that some day American flags 
would be as plentiful on the firing line as those of any 
other nation. 

His inspection over. Earl Kitchener stood out In 
front of us and addressed us briefly. He was about 
as severe a looking man as ever I have seen. But he 
was not a half bad speaker. He was brief and pointed 
and he had something to say. 

"You men look fit to represent Scotland," he said, 
fixing his eyes on the man directly In front of him. 
"You know the traditions of Scotland. I am sure you 
will live up to them. Do not forget that you also 
represent the British government. I am proud to in- 
spect so fine a body of men." 

He saluted smartly and at command we once more 
presented arms. Then Kitchener shook hands with 
each of the officers and turned to go. 

"Stand at ease. Stand easy," came the commands 
from the colonel. 

That gave us the opportunity we were waiting for. 
We cut loose a big cheer for Lord Kitchener. He 
turned around and his face softened just a little. 



52 KILTIE McCOY 

H^gain his hand went to his cap. Then he mounted, 
&nd followed by his staff, rode away. 

Soon after this we entrained and a few hours later 
we were settled for the night in a rest camp at South- 
ampton. At nine the following morning we marched 
through town once more and went on board a U-boat 
to take us across the Channel and into the fight. The 
U-boats didn't cut much figure then and they could take 
troops across the Channel in daylight without much 
danger of accident. 

It was a rough passage and although it took us only 
about four hours to make it, the rails on all three decks 
were thickly lined with brawny Scotchmen proving 
that their skirts advertised women's stomachs, at least. 
You never will be able to guess how sick that bunch 
was. If the trenches were any worse than the Channel, 
every man in the battalion was willing to go back 
home and let Fritz conquer the earth if he wanted to. 

The sight of Boulogne was the most welcome thing 
in the world. The quay was thickly covered with 
people all cheering us wildly. In those days France 
was glad to see any body of troops that might assist 
in preserving their country from the hands of the Hun. 

As we disembarked the crowd went wild. Women 
rushed up to us, threw their arms around us and with 
tears streaming down their cheeks, kissed us. This 
was not bad at all. Several mighty attractive French 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 53 

g-irls had kissed me and I was rather enjoying it. But 
all at once an old man came up and before I knew 
what he was up to, had kissed me on each cheek. 
Should I smash him? I thought I should. Then I 
noticed other Frenchmen were kissing my pals so I 
set it down as a custom of the country and allowed my 
ravisher to live. 

As soon as we could disentangle ourselves, we 
marched away, across the town to rest billets. All 
through the streets we were pelted with flowers, cigar- 
ettes, things to eat, and even given bottles of wine. 
Pretty girls would rush out at us, throw their arms 
around us and kiss us. Oh, I've been in a lot worse 
places. 

One little beauty made a leap at me as I was march- 
ing on the right flank of our fours. 'As she leaped I 
reached out my right arm, caught her in the crook of 
it, lifted her up and kissed her, passed her along to 
the next man on my left, who also kissed her and 
passed her on until, before she was fully aware what 
was happening, she had been kissed by four brawny 
Scotchmen and without her feet touching the ground 
had been passed from one side of the street to the other. 
And all the while the people were yelling at us and jab- 
bering in a language not a word of which any of us 
could understand. 

The following morning we were on parade before a 



54 KILTIE McCOY 

lot of French officers. One French general addressed 
us in a mixture of French and broken English. We 
couldn't understand a word of what he was saying but 
we were sure it was good because he waved his arms 
frantically while he was talking and all the women 
cried. So when he finished we gave him a cheer, for 
luck. Now I'll gamble good American money, the 
value of which I can undertsand, that that cheer we 
gave that general was never before equaled in the 
history of the world. Some of the members of the 
battalion thought they had learned a little French, so 
the cheer was a mixture of : "Viva Frenchmen," 
*"Vivvy la France," "Veeva Fransay," "Hooray," 
"Hurrah," "Here, Here," and from the Highlanders 
"Aye." 

But it went for what was meant rather than what 
was said and the general was doubtless pleased. He 
certainly should have been. Then, too, the pipes saved 
us a bit by starting The Marseillaise while the French 
band replied with God Save the King. 

Then we marched away again, this time to the base. 
There were in this camp perhaps fifty thousand men; 
later on, after I was wounded the first time, I was back 
there and found nearly a half million, ready to go for- 
ward when needed. But we were just the advance 
guard of Kitchener's army, one of the first contingents 
of his first million. 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 55 

Once established in this great base camp, we 
started out to buy post-cards to send back home and to 
get acquainted with the town and the French people. 

In a few hours we had become about the best pan- 
tomimists in the world. Fischer and I wanted cigars. 
We went into a shop and after a lot of acting made 
the shopkeeper understand what we were after. 

"How much?" Fischer asked, getting ready to pay 
for the smokes. 

The shopkeeper looked at us blankly. We tried 
various stunts and then Fischer pulled out some money 
and held it out to him. It was English money, how- 
ever, but the shopkeeper got the idea. 

"Cinq sou," he said. 

We were stumped. 

"Too bad. She was a fine girl," said Fischer. 
"Now what in hell does 'Sank Soo' mean?" he asked, 
turning to me. 

"I'll pass," I responded. But the shopkeeper saw 
we were over our heads and tried to help us out. He 
held up his fingers and counted off five of them. Well 
we could get that all right so we gave him five English 
pennies. The shopkeeper knew English money and was 
honest in the bargain. He returned half of it to us and 
we learned that tuppence ha'penny is the equivalent 
of "Sank Soo," whoever she was. 

A few days later we drifted into an estaminet 



56 KILTIE McCOY 

or saloon where a whole bunch of our Scotchmen 
were trying to get what they wanted from a French- 
man who couldn't understand a word of their lingo 
nor speak a word that they could understand. 

"Twa beers," ordered a Scot. 

*^Byayr?" responded the Frenchman. 

That sounded something like it so the Scotchman 
took a chance. 

"Aye. Twa," he said. 

"Old, Old," said the Frenchman, who seemed to 
have caught the Scot's idea. 

But his reply stopped the Scot for a moment. Then 
a great light dawned on him. 

"Aye. We, we," he said, pointing to his pal and to 
himself. Oh, we were learning French pretty fast 
in those days. 

We soon found some little English-French dic- 
tionaries containing such simple words as were neces- 
sary to make one's needs known. They had been 
printed for this particular purpose and they made the 
situation all the funnier. With these little diction- 
aries in front of them, the boys would sit down in an 
estaminet and attempt to order a dinner. I've heard 
it sound like this: 

*'Gi' me some doo pain and bee ure, woofs and the." 

What he was trying to ask for was bread and but- 
ter, eggs and tea, but given only a five minutes' course 



KISSED INTO FRANCE 57 

in French and that from the little book he had just 
purchased, then add to it a big Scotch burr, and the 
result was beyond belief. 

I soon discovered the way to avoid embarrass- 
ment was to hunt up in the little book what I wanted 
and then instead of trying to pronounce the words, 
just place my finger on them and say: "Bring me 
that." 

The boys learned that "bon jour" is used about as 
our "how d'ye do" or "good morning" are, but when 
they became so proficient in French that they handed 
it out on every possible occasion, it soon became more 
like "bun soor." They used it day and night alike 
and as many a damoiselle and her Scotch soldier parted 
late in the evening the Scot stuck out his chest and 
said with great pride in his accomplishment: "Bun 
soor." 

But we were not to enjoy life at this camp long. 
We had expected several months' drilling here before 
going into the trenches, but men were needed badly 
for the Huns were pressing hard. They had the men, 
the guns, the ammunition ; we had little more than the 
determination. Instead of a month or more of training, 
therefore, seven days from the time we first set foot 
on French soil we were on the firing line. No contin- 
gent since the opening days of the war has been sent 
into battle so soon after landing. 



V 



veterans 

"Fleming/' 

No answer came. 

The sergeant looked up. 

'Tleming," he repeated and louder. 

Private Kene clicked his heels togetlier, straight- 
ened stiffly to attention and responded : 

"Dead." 

"Forsythe," the sergeant called. 

Another man snapped to attention. 

"Dead," he responded. 

Five times more as the names of Harris, Kirkwood, 
MacTavish, Malcolm and Rafferty were called, a pal 
answered : 

"Dead." 

We had just returned from our first trick in the 
trenches. We were no longer rookies, we were veter- 
ans now. We had been on the firing line, had stood 
face to face with Fritz and had sustained our losses. 
Roll was now being called for the first time since we 
went in. According to the British army regulations, 
the company falls in at roll call without arms and 
'Stands at ease. This means that the men stand with 

58 



VETERANS 59 

their feet well apart and their arms behind them. As 
your name is called, you bring your heels tagether, 
drop the arms smartly to the sides, stand rigidly at 
attention and respond : "Sergeant." 

On this occasion as the names of seven of our com- 
pany were called, it was a friend, the pal who slept 
with him, who answered for him : "Dead." 

It was but two weeks before that we had left Scot- 
land, had said good-by to friends and families, and yet 
thus quickly we had become veterans, veterans through 
the killing of some of our brave fellows. 

We had been but a few days in the base camp when 
"iron rations" were issued to us. These consisted of a 
tin of bully beef, a can of tea and sugar and six hard 
biscuits. We were told these were emergency rations 
to be opened only on the order of an officer who alone 
would be qualified to determine the emergency. 

At the same time we were told we would move up 
"a little closer to the firing line." That threw us all 
into excitement. 

It was just breaking day, mixed snow and rain 
were falling and a nasty wind was cutting around our 
bare knees. Loaded with all our equipment we swung 
away from the base camp over the rough cobblestoned 
roads, slipping and sliding and sloshing in the mud and 
water, but forward — always forward "a little closer to 
the firing line." 



6o KILTIE McCOY 

All day until four in the afternoon we sloshed 
along. At that time we swung into Hazebrouck, 
which apparently had at one time been within the zone 
of fire. There among its ruins we were to camp for 
the night. We could hear the distant boom of the big 
guns and occasionally in the darkness see a star shell 
rise above the horizon, glow for a moment and then 
fade away. 

All around us were evidences that we were near the 
battle front. Troops were forever marching past us. 
Some, mud smeared and weary, were marching back in 
the direction whence we had come, going to rest after 
having done their bit out in front. 

"Oh, you rookies," they yelled at us. "You'll get 
yours a plenty. Wait till Fritz gets his eyes on those 
skirts, Jock. Lord love you but you'll get yours." 

And we handed back gibe for gibe as best we could 
for we were one thousand men, strong, big and husky 
and rather proud of ourselves. 

Here about us were guns, caissons, transports of 
all kinds, ambulances, everything; here we also saw 
some things more familiar: the busses and the lorries, 
that still bore the names of their London owners. 
From one as it rolled past us a leg protruded. From 
another a tiny red stream could be seen trickling. We 
were indeed "a little closer to the firing line." 

At four o'clock on the following afternoon we were 



VETERANS 6i 

once more on the march. Always we moved in the 
direction of the boom of the guns and the light of the 
star shells. Always we were getting "a little closer to 
the firing line." 

The roar of the artillery grew louder, the troops 
more numerous, the jam of transports, of ambulances, 
of artillery, of caissons, of supply trains more dense. 
At two in the morning we were ordered to halt and to 
sleep in the open. Here the ground occasionally shook 
under the shock of bursting shells, and we could hear 
the rattle of the machine guns. 

All the following day we watched the moving 
troops, some coming from the trenches and some pre- 
paring to go in. Here, just "a little closer to the firing 
line" was the entrance to the communicating trenches 
which lead to the firing step, to the place where, at 
last, we would be face to face with Fritz. 

Late in the afternoon we were joined by a number 
of English Tommies of the Eighth Middlesex. At 
seven that evening our battalion with C Company in 
the lead was following these Tommies through the 
communicating trenches away toward the front. 

The communicating trenches twisted and weaved 
around. We wiggled through them in single file. 
Under foot they were muddy and wet with only a few 
branches thrown on the bottom to make a little 
improvement in the footing. They were barely wide 



62 KILTIE McCOY. 

enough to permit us to walk with even a reasonable 
degree of freedom. We had, of course, all our equip- 
ment on and our pouches on either side were bulging 
with ammunition. 

Almost from the instant we entered these trenches 
we were under fire. Shells whizzed overhead and the 
ground shook with the concussion when they burst. 
A't first we were always looking up, imagining we 
could see them as they passed over us. It annoyed us, 
too, when we soon noticed that all the shells seemed to 
be going in one direction. Rarely was there a British 
shell going back to answer the hundreds the Germans 
were sending our way. Of course we didn't have the 
shells in those early days of the war and the few we did 
have were carefully husbanded for the great emer- 
gency. After we had become a little more calloused, 
we used to laugh when a British shell went over and 
one of the boys would remark with surprise in his 
tone: "Hello, they've dug up another shell some- 
where." 

Our guides warned us to keep close together, for 
to become separated might easily mean to get lost 
Always down the line cautions and orders were being 
passed : "Watch yer step." Meaning to look out for 
an obstruction. "Watch out overhead." Perhaps a 
wire of a tree branch lay across the trench. 

All at once I ducked. I don't know why I did it 



VETERANS 63 

but I did. Scarcely had I done so when Just ahead of 
me there came a tremendous roar and a shock that 
threw me against the side of the trench. It seemed, 
too, as if I had been struck in the face. My eyes 
batted and my ears ached. 

The hne stopped. I recovered my senses and rather 
guessed a shell must have exploded somewhat nearer 
than usual. The line moved forward again. 

"Watch yer step," came back the warning. 

I stumbled in the darkness and stopped to see what 
it was in front of me. It startled me when I recog- 
nized the kilts and uniform of our battalion. I stooped 
a little lower. There in the bottom of the trench lay 
Pete Forsythe. Pete's fighting days were over. 

Always I had had a horror of the dead. Whenever 
I had attended a funeral, I had avoided looking on the 
body. Now right at my feet lay Pete Forsythe. Back 
there in Scotland were his wife and his two bairns. 
I knew them well. Many a time during our period of 
training in Hamilton I had gone to Pete's home for a 
meal. Pete would never go back there now. 

"Go ahead," somebody growled from behind me. 

"Come on. Keep together. Watch yer step," 
came the word from farther up. 

Again I looked in front of me. There lay another 
body. It was that of Geordie Malcolm. More lay 
near. Fleming, Rafferty, Harris and MacTavish, six 



64 KILTIE McCOY 

of them, six of our company lay there where a single 
shell had caught them on their way to the front-line 
trenches. 

I moved forward again but I was silent and 
depressed. All the hero stuff was gone out of me. 
I couldn't drive from my mind the mental picture of 
those six fine big fellows who only seven days ago I 
had seen so proudly kissing their loved ones farewell 
on the station platform at Hamilton. Now they lay 
dead in the bottom of a communicating trench. They 
had never reached the firing line. Never once had 
they sighted their rifles in the direction of Fritz. 

I was still thinking hard when a voice in front of 
me caused me to start. It was an officer who was 
directing the men as they came up to their proper 
places. I turned according to my instructions. I was 
in the first-line trench at last, days, even weeks, before 
I had even dreamed I would be. 

Somebody in our outfit struck a match to light a 
cigarette. 

"Put out that light," bawled an officer. 

*'Put-put-put-put," ripped overhead. 

It was Fritz's answer to the invitation. He let fly 
with a machine gun, hoping an English head might be 
sticking up above the parapet near that light. And 
Fritz was only about fifty yards away at this par- 
ticular point. 



VETERANS 65 

We were promptly paired with Middlesex men. 
Part of our company was immediately sent to the dug- 
outs to sleep. The rest were sent to the firing step 
for guard duty. Fischer and I happened to be as- 
signed to guard duty first and with our Middlesex 
teachers were sent to the same firing bay. 

While on g-uard duty the men are always paired. 
One stands on the firing step with his eyes always 
turned toward Fritz, always on the alert and always 
ready to fire. The second man remains below usually 
sitting on the firing step. He is to take the place of 
his partner if hit, he is to give the alarm to the sleeping 
men if Fritz starts anything and he is to pass along 
the orders or messages that may be sent through the 
trenches. 

My Middesex man was waiting for me to mount 
the firing step, for Fischer and I had agreed I should 
do my trick of a half-hour first. I looked up at the 
parapet above me and realized that as soon as I stepped 
up, my head was going to be exposed to the rifle fire of 
Fritz. What would I see when I stepped up? I was 
wondering. AH sorts of ideas came into my mind. 
Perhaps I was soon to join Forsythe and those other 
lads who had fallen back there in the communicating 
trench. 

It was a real mental effort to force myself up on 
that firing step, but I did it. My head came above the 



66 KILTIE McCOY 

parapet. Before me I saw — darkness! But I knew 
that somewhere out in front Fritz was waiting for a 
chance to shoot. My Middlesex partner stepped up 
in a perfectly businesslike way. It meant nothing at 
all to him. 

At first I had an almost irresistible desire to duck. 
Then it seemed to me I could see persons moving out 
there in front. I wanted to fire. I glanced at my 
Middlesex partner. He was leaning up against the 
parapet keenly alert, his eyes fixed always out there 
across No Man's Land, but he was motionless. No 
appearance of excitement about him. It was just busi- 
ness. 

A star shell went up. It was such a star shell as 
I had never seen before. It lighted the entire area as 
brilliantly as a search-light. Our little weaklings were 
merely tallow candles beside them. 

I ducked. 

"Whatcha duckin' for?" asked my partner. 

I looked at him. He was standing motionless as a 
statue, looking keenly over toward Fritz. 

"r-r-r-r-r-r-R-R-R-R-R-R-r-r-r-r-r!" 

Again I ducked. It was the rattle of a machine 
gun that Fritz had turned loose at what he thought 
were heads made visible by the star shell. 

Again my partner scoffed at me as he stood there 
motionless. Then he entered into a somewhat lengthy 



VETERANS dy 

and altogether interesting dissertation on the behavior 
of a soldier and why. His instructions stood me in 
good stead later. 

First, when a star shell goes up, no matter where 
you are, "freeze" like a hunting dog. The blinding 
rays of the star shell coming suddenly out of the dark- 
ness make it impossible to see anything that is mo- 
tionless. Don't drop. Don't run. Don't move. Don't 
even breathe. Freeze and you can't be seen. 

Second, the crack of machine-gun fire is loudest 
when just overhead. If you wait until it is loudest 
before ducking, you either duck needlessly because 
danger has passed or you are dead before you duck — 
if the ball was meant for you. 

Third, there's no use ducking or dodging anyway. 
When your "ticket is up" you'll get it anyway, no 
matter what you do. Until that time comes you will 
be safe anywhere. 

After this I stood still and began to accustom my- 
self to conditions. One thing bothered me. That 
was Fischer sitting down there behind me in almost 
perfect safety. 

"You remind me of that old joke about the vice- 
president of the United States," I said to him at length. 
"You just sit there on my step waiting for me to get 
plugged so you can get my job." 

Fischer snorted for he had lived in the States 



68 KILTIE McCOY 

almost as muc; as in England. Our two Middlesex 
men, however, didn't get a bit of it and never batted 
an eye. 

Our half-hour was about over and I hadn't yet 
fired my rifle. Two or three times when star shells 
were sent up I had been certain I had seen men out 
in front. Anxious to appear on the alert, I had spoken 
of this to my Middlesex partner, but his only remark 
was: 

"Yer eyes are playin' yer tricks. A bloke's always 
seein' things till he gits used to it." 

But I was determined to fire my rifle anyway, so 
just before Fischer relieved me, I said a little prayer, 
pointed by rifle in the general direction of the German 
trenches and pulled the trigger. 

The result was all unexpected. I was promptly 
given a hard shove by my Middlesex partner who 
moved quickly several feet from our last position. 
The reason was immediately apparent. A ball came 
cracking back over us. I then learned the German 
snipers were quite likely to fire back at the flash of 
one of our rifles. Therefore it was the correct thing 
to move at once after firing in the dark. 

At length we were relieved. The time had come 
when we were to seek a dugout and sleep. Fischer 
and I went to the one assigned us. We had great 
(Curiosity as to what it would be like. Of course we 



VETERANS 69 

had built some back in Scotland but we had already- 
found out that a great many things we did back there 
were not at all in vogue here in France. 

The dugouts in this particular sector were unusu- 
ally deep and the one to which we happened to be 
assigned was one of the deepest. Ten steps were nec- 
essary to descend from the level of the trench to the 
level of the dugout floor. Except for our kits we 
were not permitted to remove any of our equipment 
at any time we were in the front-line trenches. With 
our equipment, entrenching tools, water-bottle, etc., on 
our backs, our pouches bulging with ammunition on 
each side, a rifle in one hand and our kit in the other 
we reached the entrance to the dugout. I was ahead. 
I squeezed myself through the low and narrow door- 
way and stepped upon the top step. I started to de- 
scend. The steps were slippery and slimy with mud 
and water. In an instant I was at the bottom of the 
dugout. My feet had shot from under me. Expe- 
ditiously, if not gracefully, I had made my entrance. 

Before I could assemble myself Fischer arrived 
in much the same manner. We disengaged ourselves 
and then began to look about at the palatial apartments 
in which we were expected to sleep. 

A candle end was burning. By its flickering and 
uncertain light we discovered ten men already sleeping 
In the little room. We looked for our feather bed but 



70 KILTIE McCOY 

could find nothing resembling one. We could scarcely 
find room to lie down anyway. At length we made 
it, but lying down was a long way from sleeping. 

I tried to find a comfortable position. Forbidden 
to remove what I had on me, this seemed impossible. 
I couldn't lie upon my back, my entrenching tool and 
the water-bottle on my hips prevented. I couldn't lie 
on my side, for either way I turned those pouches of 
ammunition got in the way. Later on I learned how 
to unbuckle my belt and throw back the pouches to 
permit me to lie upon my side, still [without removing 
any of the equipment. 

Uncomfortable as I was this night, I managed 
to doze a little. But it seemed I had scarcely lost 
consciousness when we were all turned out. It was a 
little before daybreak, when it was customary fully to 
man the front-line trenches for that was the hour when 
Fritz was most likely to start something. This morn- 
ing, however, was uneventful except for the usual 
morning hate as we called the shower of bullets and 
shells with which both sides opened and closed the 
day. 

"Keep yer knobs down," was the warning which 
over and over was dinned into us this morning, for in 
the daytime, to stick your head above the parapet 
meant to draw the fire of a German sniper, so obser- 
vation of Fritz was confined to the periscopes. 

At this time, the trench periscopes consisted of 



VETERANS 71 

a small mirror stuck on a stick. This was raised at the 
rear of the trench and from the front we caught the 
reflections of what was doing out in No Man's Land. 
I couldn't keep away from the periscope. Indeed it 
was almost a fight among our own men to stand in 
front of one. It was our first view of over there in 
the direction of Berlin. During our night guard duty 
we had been unable to see anything. 

Jock Kirkwood of our company was not satisfied 
with looking Fritz over through a mirror. 

"Hell," he said, "I'm going to have a good look." 

Over there concealed carefully and protected were 
German snipers waiting for some rookie to take just 
such a look, but Jock couldn't resist. He was near 
me as I sat on the firing step looking into a periscope. 
When nobody was watching he cautiously stepped 
up on the step and raised his head above the parapet. 

"Chuck!" 

I heard a slight sound and turned just in time to 
see Jock's body crumple up on the step beside me and 
roll into the bottom of the trench. Poor Jock had 
taken a chance. He had seen nothing, but a sniper 
had seen him, A ball had caught him squarely in the 
mouth, and he was dead when he hit the bottom of 
the trench. 

We all stood around him in wonderment. He 
was the seventh of our company to click in since we 
entered the communicating trench yesterday afternoon. 



'JT. KILTIE McCOY 

Six of them we had hardly been able to make out in 
the darkness and hurry of the night before, but now 
it was broad daylight and here at our feet lay Jock 
dead. Stretcher-bearers came and took his body away. 
His death had been a lesson to us. Now we were 
content to watch Fritz through those measly little 
mirrors. 

Next day as our company moved back to the sup- 
port trenches and another company came in to relieve 
us in the front line, I was ordered to the rear. When 
I had gone out with a number more detailed like 
myself, I found it was to act as escort at the funeral 
of the first seven of C Company to give their lives for 
their country and humanity. 

A British cemetery had already been established 
back of the lines. We took over a section of it. 
Wrapped in their blankets and with their uniforms 
still on, these seven men were laid to rest. No bugle 
sounded over them. No salute was fired. We were 
too near the lines, and besides, ammunition was pre- 
cious in those days. 

And so it was that but a few days later when the 
battalion had come out of the trenches, when the roll 
was called seven men in C Company responded only 
through the mouths and hearts of their friends, and 
their response as they brought their heels together was: 

"Dead." 



VI 



REST 



"Show me a regiment with a reputation like the 
Gordons'." 

"Damned few want one Hke it." 

Wham! 

The battle was on. Kilties rushed from all direc- 
tions. Every man swung a pair of big fists at every 
head in sight. Tables were overturned. Chairs went 
into the air. Glassware was broken. Blood spurted 
from squashed noses. Eyes suddenly closed and big 
shed roofs appeared above them. 

From the mob came the cries of the Gordon High- 
landers, the yells of the Argylls, the curses of the 
Cameronians, the latter being our outfit. In an in- 
stant the estaminet was wrecked. Then as suddenly 
as it had begun, the battle ceased. Military police 
entered as the fighters of a moment before very tamely 
filed out. 

We were in rest billets at Fleurbaix following our 
first trick in the front-line trenches. For six days — 
we thought — we would have nothing to do but rest 
and make merry. We had received our first pay 

73 



74 KILTIE McCOY 

amounting to ten francs for the single men and five 
francs for the married ones. John Bull takes out 
half the pay of his married men and sends it direct 
to their dependents. With money in our pockets, 
therefore, we were on twenty-four hour leave to spend 
it 

Of course we had crowded into the estaminet. 
There were assembled soldiers from all the British 
forces but chiefly, at this point, from the Scottish 
units. Whenever the Scotch regiments get together, 
each always begins to sing the praises of his particular 
outfit. So it was this evening. While the men were 
sitting about the tables in the estaminet mixing the 
light French wines with the light French beers in an 
endeavor to impart some "kick" to the mixture, the 
men of the Gordons, the men of the Argylls and our 
own Cameronians began to tell just how good each 
regiment was. The implied insult to the Gordon 
Highlander who was singing the praises of his justly 
famous regiment brought forth instant refutation via 
the fist, and the fight was on. 

Next morning, sore and stiff and with many a 
brave Scot wearing decorations not awarded for gal- 
lantry in action against Fritz, we stood at attention and 
listened to the order that every man in the battalion 
was fined tuppence to make good the damage to the 
estaminet. lAs each of the other outfits which took 



REST 75 

part in that memorable engagement was similarly- 
treated, the Frenchman who ran the place spent a part 
of each day praying that the evening might see another 
battle such as that of the night before. 

But we had had our fun during that twenty-four 
hours' spending period. We had enjoyed a thorough 
relaxation and had forgotten all about war and the 
hardships and dangers out there in front. The likeli- 
hood that when next pay-day came around many of 
us would have already passed to eternal rest billets 
we never considered. We were interested now in 
enjoying our respite from the work in the trenches. 
Why worry about the morrow? 

Another day had dawned, another day of rest. 
Nothing to do but see France and the people of the 
vicinity. Nothing to do but sing and play and fight 
among ourselves. Oh, this was the life! It was wortH 
taking a chance with Fritz. 

But somehow, having formed the battalion and 
having read the order for fines, the order to dismiss 
failed to come. We were inspected. Well, what of 
that? That would soon be over. Then we would be 
turned loose again. Inspection was over. Were we 
dismissed? Not much. We got a couple of hours 
of hard drill instead. 

"Thought this was a rest camp," growled Fischer 
during a moment of relaxation. 



7(S KILTIE McCOY 

"Maybe it i's your English idea of rest/* I re- 
sponded, for I could always get a rise out of Jim by 
a gentle gibe at the English. 

Noon came and with it dinner. Surely we would 
be turned loose in the afternoon. We were not, how- 
ever. Instead we got another hard drill and a good 
long route march. Rest was not on the card for that 
day. 

But perhaps the work of this day was merely in 
punishment for the disturbance of the night previous. 
To-morrow we would be turned loose. 

To-morrow came and before night fell I had es- 
tablished title to being the third fastest sprinter on 
the western front, and I hereby challenge the nations 
of the earth to produce a man who can defeat the two 
men who defeated me. 

The race which settled the question of superiority 
was an impromptu affair but none the less exciting. 
As soon as the morning duties were over, we marched 
away from the rest billets once more in the direction 
of the trenches. What was the big idea now ? Every- 
body wanted to know and nobody was able to find out. 
Mile after mile we marched always back toward the 
trenches from whence we had but recently come for 
a six-day rest. Only two days had passed and we 
were returning. What did it mean? 

We found out soon enough, when we reached a 



REST j-j 

great dump where were stacked up mountains of reeled 
barbed wire, pyramids of ammunition, great masses 
of clothing, supplies, food, everything that the soldier 
needed either for sustenance or for actual fighting. 
We were soon loaded up with all we could carry: 
some of us with bales of supplies; I had a reel of 
barbed wire; some had one thing and some another. 
Then with our burdens we started off once more 
toward the trenches. To make our rest worth while 
we had been detailed a work party for the day. 

Into the communicating trench we passed carrying 
our loads. I heard the whir of an airplane propeller. 
We had long since been instructed never to look up 
at an airplane since our white faces would then become 
visible to the aviator and give him some idea of our 
numbers. Besides we had become .accustomed to see- 
ing and hearing Fritz's planes hover over us whenever 
he felt like it, for at that time the Germans had abso- 
lute mastery of the air. 

The whir grew louder and the shadow of the plane 
fell over us. He must be flying mighty low. I looked. 
Sure enough, he was so low it seemed his propeller 
might strike the ground. He passed over us, shot into 
the air, whirled around and came back upon us, flying 
close down to that trench and lengthwise of it. As he 
approached, his machine gun began spitting at us. The 
race was on rigfht then! 



;S KILTIE McCOY 

I haven't the slightest idea how I got out of that 
seven-foot trench but I did it. The first thing I fully 
realized was that I was above ground putting every 
pound I had into a mad dash for a shell-hole. The 
rest of our company was doing likewise. Each man 
had dropped his burden, got out of that trench and 
started to race for other cover. Jammed in the trench 
we offered a fair target for that machine gun. Out 
above ground scattered and running, Fritz might 
laugh at us but he had a poor chance of getting us. 

I figured as I ran that I was setting a world's 
record. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I 
jumped into that shell-hole and found two men who 
had beaten me to it. Just how panic-stricken I was 
you may guess when I tell you that I tried my best 
to dig in under those two kilties. I've often wondered 
how they beat me in that race, but I'll bet if the truth 
were known they beat the pistol. 

That German got seven of our men in that trench 
before we could scatter. But once he had driven us 
out, he flew away and we went back to our work. By 
the loss of those men we were forced to make two 
trips to the front line with our goods, for we had to 
deliver the burdens of the dead men as well as our 
own. 

It was night when we got back to the billets again 



REST 79 

after a long, long hike. We had now had three days 
of our rest period. The first day had been occupied in 
spending our pay, the second in drills and a route 
march and the third in carrying wire and supplies to 
the front line, dodging a German aviator and losing 
seven men, as many as we had lost in our first six days 
in the front-line trenches. The British army idea of 
rest was certainly a great and wonderful thing. 

But all next forenoon we did little but sleep and 
clean up. As the officers didn't seem very energetic, 
we rather figured we were really to rest. 

"Fall in" came with the afternoon, and with full 
equipment we once more swung out of the camp and in 
the direction of the trenches. Surely there was no 
rest for the Scot, 

Where we were bound, we didn't know. We were 
taking the general direction of the firing line, and as 
we marched along we speculated on what was to be 
our new stunt. Perhaps the Germans had broken 
through and the Cameronian Scottish Rifles had been 
called to save the British army. Maybe we were just 
going over to Berlin to eat a few cans of bully beef 
under the lindens. All sorts of fool suggestions were 
offered as It became more and more apparent that we 
were bound once more for the trenches. 

At length we reached them and in the familiar 



8o KILTIE McCOY 

single file started through the communicating trenches. 
As we entered I observed one of the Royal Engineers 
join our party. It was rapidly growing dark and we 
were ordered to keep close together. I followed im-. 
mediately behind the guide and the officer in command. 
Through the communicating trench we passed until 
at last we were in the front line. For a long distance 
we followed our guide blindly. At length we halted 
and were told to lay aside our equipment and leave it 
where we could pick it up and get into it quickly. 
That done our guide walked a few steps farther and 
then suddenly disappeared. 

"Come on and watch yer step." 

The voice seemed to come from the bowels of the 
earth. It startled me a bit. I looked and in the dark- 
ness of the trench I saw an even blacker hole in the 
front wall. It was like the entrance to a dugout. I 
stooped and entered. Down a considerable flight of 
steps I slipped and slid. At the bottom I found our 
guide crouched over and with a miner's lamp in his 
hand. 

"Follow me," he said, and bent over nearly double 
he started rapidly along what appeared to be a tunnel. 

I could just see the outline of his form by the light 
of his lamp. The tunnel was about three feet high 
and no more than that in width, which made it neces- 
sary to walk with the back at right angles to the legs. 



REST 8i 

Our guide was trotting along like a rabbit. I was fol- 
lowing as best I could with Fischer and the rest of the 
company following behind. 

We hadn't gone far when my back ached as it 
never had ached before. My cramped position, too, 
made it difificult to breathe. I was puffing hard. 

"What's the great hurry?" somebody behind me 
called. 

"Comxe on. We haven't got all night here," called 
back the guide. 

I kept on as best I could. Behind me I could hear 
Fischer panting and swearing and back of him a con- 
tinuous stream of cussing. 

At last I could stand it no longer. I conceived the 
Idea of dropping to my knees and creeping after that 
rabbit ahead, who wore the uniform of the Royal 
Engineers. I v/ent down upon my knees and tried to 
keep the pace. It proved impossible. I was falling 
behind. Fischer stumbled over my heels and fell flat on 
top of me. Then came the great idea. 

"Don't move," I said to him. "Stay right where 
you are." 

"Come on, you blokes," called the engineer ahead 
of us. 

"Go to blazes !" I called back. "I'm going to remain 
right here till I get my wind." 

And we did. Fischer and I effectually blocked the 



82 KILTIE McCOY 

tunnel and all the other men back of us were glad 
enough to squat down, lie down or sit down for a 
rest. 

By this time, of course, we had a pretty fair idea 
that we were in a mine tunnel. The thought brought 
anything but comfort to me. How far below the 
ground we were I had no idea. Where we were with 
relation to Fritz's trenches, I didn't know. We might 
be under his front line or under Berlin for all I knew. 
Perhaps we might come up in Willie's bedchamber. 
All I really knew was that we were underground to 
an uncertain depth and in an uncertain locality, that 
the air was close and foul, that it was dark except for 
the uncertain light of the miner's lamp and that our 
backs were nearly broken. 

"Suppose while we are down here," I thought, 
"Fritz should take it into his head to make a raid. 
He would catch us like mice in a trap and without 
even a chance to fight back. Suppose a shell should 
happen to hit the trench in such a manner as to destroy 
the entrance to our tunnel. We'd have a few minutes 
only in which to think things over before our lights 
would go out from suffocation. It's a fine place to 
be in when so many things jean happen. I'll confess 
I'd rather take my chances against that boche in his 
airplane. I could run then at any rate." 

We were up and moving again. At length I made 



REST 83 

out a little light ahead. A few paces more and we 
came to the place where the miners were at work. 
One man was down on his knees picking away at the 
earth while others shoveled the dirt into sacks. The 
sacks were passed back to us, and crouched down in that 
narrow space we passed them from one to another 
until they reached the mouth of the tunnel where they 
were taken by other men above ground, carried back 
of the front-line trench and emptied, the sacks being 
sent back into the tunnel again. 

The sacks were small and individually not heavy, 
but by the time I had passed them back for half an 
hour, sweat was coming from every pore, I breathed 
in gasps and my back ached worse than ever. Nobody 
seemed Inclined to tell us to rest so we just took one 
on our own responsibility. As there was no objection 
we kicked ourselves for not having taken one before. 

We were now all sitting In the bottom of the tunnel, 
getting our wind and talking along the line. For just 
an Instant a dead silence fell. 

"Tap. Tap. Chug. Chug." 

We all heard it. Every man looked at his neigh- 
bor. I could feel a cold sweat break out all over me. 
Funny little creeps ran up and down my spine. What 
was It? Everybody listened except the miners, who 
seemed to be paying no attention to that little sound 
which came so plainly from the earth. 



84 KILTIE McCOY 

"What's that noise?" I asked the engineer just 
ahead of me. 

"Fritz," he responded laconically. 

"Fritz," I repeated, and I know my voice shook 
a little. "What's he doing to make that noise?" 

"Diggin' a mine," was the reply, and the miners 
stopped work so we could plainly hear again the thud 
of Fritz's pick somewhere down in the bowels of the 
earth. 

Every man was listening intently. Those up in 
front were passing back to those behind the conver- 
sation which was taking place between the engineer 
and me. 

"Whereabouts is he diggin'?" I asked. 

*Tretty handy by the sound," said the engineer. 

Where was he? Was he digging below us and 
perhaps getting ready to blow us up? Was he above 
us, and would he come through on top of us? Was 
he digging so he would suddenly burst in and toss a 
bomb among us? Where was he? The uncertainty 
was getting on my nerves. 

"Can't he hear us digging?" I asked. 

"Sure," was the reply. 

"Fine little rat-hole," I said with some scorn. 
"Whichever gets his mine dug last goes up first." 

"Oh, it's all safe enough as long as we can hear 
him," said the engineer. "When we can no longer 



REST 85 

hear him digging, then we begin to look out for he is 
about ready to touch off his mine. We Hke to hear 
him. We know we are safe then." 

However, I didn't feel overly comfortable. I 
didn't have enough faith in Fritz that he wouldn't be 
perfectly willing to sacrifice his own men for the 
sake of getting us. 

But at last that night of labor ended. Tired and 
dirty we crawled back out of that tunnel and started 
on our long hike to the rest billets. That rest stuff 
was by now a byword among us. During the time 
we had been in rest billets we had been harder at work 
except for the first day than when we were in the 
trenches. But the end of our rest was near. A few 
days more and we would be back on the firing step. 
We were thankful for that ; we should be able to stand 
up straight at least. We would have the satisfaction 
of being killed while looking Fritz straight in the eye. 
We would not be mere rats in a trap without a chance 
even to struggle for life. 

Vacation was almost over. We would go back to 
the firing step to recover from our rest. Actually we 
were going back to a slaughter pen, but that we didn't 
know. 



VII 



THE CRATER S LIP 

"I'd like to know whether I can shoot straight 
with this old blunderbuss." 

"Me, too, but up to date as near as I can figure out 
we have qualified only as first-class common laborers 
who can dig sewers, carry reels of barbed wire and 
bales of other supplies and crawl through any hole big 
enough to let a rat in." 

I had asked the question of Fischer one morning 
about tw^o o'clock as we were standing our trick at 
guard duty in the reserve trench, our second time back 
to the firing line. It was a different sort of duty from 
that in the front-line trench. Here we did not watch 
over the parapet. Instead we stood in pairs at the inter- 
sections of the communicating trenches with the re- 
serve trenches. We challenged everybody who passed 
along and especially kept a sharp lookout for gas, lis- 
tening keenly always for that most dreaded of all 
sounds, the "tong, tong" of the gas gong. These gas 
gongs consisted of the brass shell casing of an eighteen 
pounder. They were hung at each of these intersec- 
tions and near by always lay a chunk of iron. Kt the 

86 



THE CRATER'S LIP 87 

first suspicion of gas, it was the duty of the discoverer 
to sound the alarm, and soon that "tong, tong" would 
be ringing for many miles up and down the trenches 
and far back of the lines. 

"Perhaps we'll get action our next time up," I 
said as I lighted a cigarette, for we were permitted to 
smoke in the reserve trenches. "I'd really like to try 
my luck on a live target instead '* 

A tremendous roar drove from my mind whatever 
else I might have said. The ground rocked as if by an 
earthquake. I was thrown against the side of the 
trench. Instinctively I looked toward the front-line 
trenches. The sky was red in that direction. Around 
us dirt, stones and debris of all kinds were falling. 

It was not necessary for us to give the alarm. 
From the dugouts the men came, buckling their belts 
as they ran. Everybody knew what had happened. 
Fritz had blown a mine in our front-line trenches. If 
permitted to occupy and hold the crater he would con- 
stitute a serious menace to our whole line in that 
sector. 

We knew we were to get action at last. Now we 
should look death squarely in the face for we would 
make use of our bayonets for the first time. Now we 
should look death squarely in the face, for we would 
meet Fritz toe to toe, hand to hand, the better man to 
live, the weaker to die. 



88 KILTIE McCOY 

I trembled with excitement. The order came im- 
mediately to go over. We all tried to show how little 
we were frightened and how solid our nerves were. 

"Here goes nothing," I said to Fischer, as we 
climbed up out of the trench and began picking our 
way through our own wire. As I think of it now 
I am sure we were all a little hysterical in our excite- 
ment, for a lot of meaningless banter ran up and down, 
the line. 

In front of our entanglements we deployed and 
then raced toward our front-line trenches where we 
knew Fritz was already established in the mine crater 
prepared for our reception. 

Star shells began going up. Fritz's rifles cracked. 
I saw one of our men pitch forward and fall. Numbly 
I realized what had happened to him but it didn't seem 
to occur to me that I might be the next. 

"Put-put-put-put-put-put-put." 

Fritz had set up a machine gun and already it had 
begun to purr. 

"Lie down," came the order, and we flopped to the 
ground and began crawling toward Fritz and the 
crater. 

"I'm hit." 

A big fellow named Jolley crawling along at my 
right spoke. I heard a slight gurgle. Turning my 



THE CRATER'S LIP 89 

head, I saw Jolley lying quite still with the blood flow- 
ing from a wound in his neck. 

"Jolley's got his," I called to Fischer, who was 
crawling along close on my left. 

"We'll all get ours in another minute," was his 
comforting reply. 

"Not unless it's our turn," I responded, for I was 
pretty well filled with that fatalistic stuff which every 
soldier gets sooner or later. 

We were firing away at the crater but our chances 
of hitting anything were vastly inferior to our chances 
of being hit. We were up in the open. The east was 
already showing signs of dawn. All at once something 
came bouncing in among us and exploded with a bang. 
Half a dozen men neai' by thrashed about a little and 
lay still. It was our introduction to the hand grenade, 
something we did not at that time have. 

"Fall back." 

The order came as a most welcome one. We were 
losing heavily and without a chance to get an even 
break in the fighting. 

We were crawling back as fast as we could. I 
was making just as good time as any man in the 
outfit. Suddenly I found myself crawling across the 
body of a man. I stopped horrified. Then I looked at 
the face, young Stewart lay there in the breaking 



90 KILTIE McCOY 

dawn just as peacefully as if he had fallen asleep. 
He was but a lad, nineteen years of age. He left col- 
lege to join up with us. No finer boy ever lived than 
he. He was a quiet, refined, pink-cheeked lad who said 
little and was always kind and courteous to every- 
body. He never mixed in any of the rough stuff some 
of the rest of us got into. He never stole from his 
mates and consequently nobody ever stole from him. 
His record sheet was as clean as the day he enlisted. 
Every man of us loved him and as I saw him lying 
there in the half light, I felt like stopping to cry, even 
as the bullets and the shells flew about me. Stewart 
had been shot through the chest, and as he lay there 
was not a sign of pain or fear on his face. He looked 
as pink-cheeked and as smiling as he always did in 
life. 

At length we were back in the reserve trench ; that 
is, all but seventy of us were, for in that ten minutes 
out there before the crater that many of our men had 
fallen. We were back again cursing and swearing and 
anxious to get at Fritz. Then down the line the word 
was passed : "Stewart has clicked it." Instantly all 
was silence. For a moment we forgot our individual 
grievances against Fritz, to mourn for that pink- 
cheeked boy, and as we stood there, grim and dirty, 
with our fighting blood still boiling, I am sure every 



THE CRATER'S LIP 91 

man registered a vow that Fritz must pay dearly for 
the loss of young Stewart. 

All day we were busy getting ready to wreak our 
revenge. Every meat tin we could find was filled with 
powder, nails, bits of barbed wire, fragments of old 
shells, anything and everything that was hard. The 
lid was wired tight shut except for a small hole through 
which we thrust a fuse made of powder wrapped in 
paper. When night came and we returned to the 
attack we would have bombs, too. Of course it was 
hard to say whether our home-made bombs were more 
dangerous to ourselves than to Fritz, but, on the other 
hand, we couldn't say a whole lot for Fritz's product. 
Fully half of these were duds. 

It was early in the evening when again we got the 
word to go over. Carefully and silently we eased our 
way through the wire and crawled slowly toward the 
crater. We knew Fritz had been working feverishly 
all day to dig himself in. He knew we would be com- 
ing back after him to-night, and was making the most 
of his time to prepare a reception for us at the lip of 
the crater. 

But Fritz didn't expect us quite so soon. He 
thought we would at least have the decency to wait 
until midnight before disturbing him. He was there- 
fore mightily surprised when we began to sling our 



92 KILTIE McCOY 

home-made bombs at him and followed them up with 
a rush. 

At last we were to have a chance to use our steel. 
I had been most curious about our bayonet drill and 
wondered if what we had learned back there in Scot- 
land would be as useless as most of the other things 
we had learned. Something like these thoughts passed 
through my mind as with a yell I sprang up and along 
with Fischer raced forward to meet Fritz. 

Immediately in front of me there loomed up what 
I thought then and what I still insist was the biggest 
Prussian the kaiser's realm ever produced. With a 
yell I charged him. Instinctively I realized that if I 
lunged with my bayonet point at the height it was held 
when running, I would get my man somewhere near 
the throat. As I neared him, he, for some reason, 
turned his head and spoke to somebody on his left. 
At the same time I lowered the point of my bayonet. 
It caught him in the exact spot we had been taught to 
get them — just above the belt and just below the breast 
bone. The point of my bayonet passed through his 
clothing, met with some resistance as it struck his 
abdominal wall, then it let through quickly and easily. 

The German dropped his rifle and fell to the ground 
squealing and kicking and thrashing around. A sud- 
den sickness seized me. I had killed a human being! 



THE CRATER'S LIP 93 

Then I realized what I was there for ; had I not killed 
him he msost certainly would have killed me and with- 
out the slightest compunction. But even as I realized 
all this, the knowledge that I had actually tal^en human 
life nauseated me even in the excitement of that 
moment 

I felt terribly sick at my stomach; felt certain I 
was going to vomit Had it been light I am sure m^ 
comrades would have seen mt pale. I was weak; my 
knees trembled. I couldn't take my eyes from the 
body of that German lying there before me. All the 
fight was out of me. For just a brief instant I stood 
still, an easy victim for any Hun who might have been 
near me. I looked toward Fischer just in time to see 
him drive his bayonet into a Germian and pull the 
trigger at the same time. I saw big McGill stick two 
and later found that in the few minutes' battle on the 
crater's lip he actually stuck four. 

I even took account of how I had handled myself. 
As I did so, I realized I had done everything in the 
exact manner I had been taught and had myself taught 
others. I had driven my bayonet home at the proper 
spot. I had yelled at the German as I thrust. I had 
shown hate. I had withdrawn exactly as taught 
Everything had been automatic with me. I had had 
the bayonet drill so thoroughly ground into my system 



94 KILTIE McCOY 

that I did all these things in that exciting moment 
without ever thinking of one of them. 

Dazed and sick I stood, it seemed an hour yet it 
probably was but a few seconds. The fight was short 
and sharp. It was all but over now. I heard a shout. 

"Look out there!" 

I turned to the left. There I saw a party of Ger- 
mans running up through a shallow trench they had 
dug. They would catch us on the flank. My fighting 
blood came back. I ran at them. I was on the level 
ground ; they were below me slightly in the trench. 
As I reached the foremost man I thrust at his throat. 
He hadn't a chance. The bayonet showed at the back 
of his neck, his hot blood spurted all over my hands. 
Again I stopped ; again I was sick and for an instant 
felt as if I was going to faint, but the fight was over 
now, the rest of the Germans, the few who remained 
alive, turned and fled. We had won the crater. 

In the weird light of the star shells and bursting 
shells and spitting flashes of machine guns we had 
fought our first battle. I had had a chance to test my 
mettle. Twice I had won in man to man mortal com- 
bat. Fischer still lived, too. Now we all scrambled 
around that crater as fast as we could in order to dig 
in on the side facing Fritz. 

In the bottom lay dozens of bodies, most of them 

Germans but a few of them ours. We examined them 



THE CRATER'S LIP 95 

all carefully, to make certain all were dead. We re- 
moved the identification disks from the bodies of our 
own men and there in the bottom of that crater for 
which both had fought valiantly, we buried friend and 
foe together. As we dug ourselves in we threw the 
dirt over the bodies and thus they helped even in their 
death to prepare a defense against the counter-attacks 
certain to come. They did come, too, but we held that 
crater and finally established ourselves in it, restoring 
pur former line. 

But our work was not yet done. We had a little 
surprise party ready for Fritz, too. We had a mine 
near this point which we were ready to touch off. 
Five days later we were sent to the spot. Night came 
and we crept silently out into No Man's Land. There 
we lay flat upon our faces waiting the moment when 
somebody behind should touch the button that would 
send Fritz nearer heaven than he'll ever get otherwise. 

At length there was a terrible roar. The earth 
rocked with the force of the explosion. The air was 
filled with dirt, debris, rifles, bodies and parts of bodies. 
Scarcely waiting for all this mass to come down, we 
rose and rushed for the crater. Through meshes of 
broken and tangled wire we made our way only to 
be met by a terrific fire from rifle,> machine gun and 
bomb. 

We scrambled into the crater, fought as hard as 



96 KILTIE McCOY 

we could, attempted to dig ourselves in. Then from 
all sides centering upon this spot came a hail of rifle 
bullet and shell. No human force could stand it. 
Fritz with his tremendous preponderance of artillery 
and everything else to fight with centered all upon 
this crater. 

Our men were falling like flies. The order came 
quickly. "Fall back." Back through the tangled wires 
we made our uncertain way. Men kept dropping on 
all sides. We raced across No Man's Land while the 
enemy barrage pursued us. We reached our own 
entanglements. Now a lane through the entanglement 
is cut zigzag with trip-wires at each opening. For one 
or two men it is not difficult to find the way and pass 
through quickly. But when you have a couple hundred 
men who have just been through hell, who have ex- 
pected and are still expecting death any second, a couple 
hundred men whose sole desire is to get into the shelter 
of a trench in the quickest possible time, the way 
through the wires is difficult. 

Some of our men lost their heads entirely. With- 
out seeking the lanes, they madly imagined they could 
force their way through the entanglements. They 
leaped into them and many a good man died there. 
Remember that the barbs on these wires are not the 
little barbs you see on the fence around the farm. The 
spikes on these wires are long and as sharp as steel 



THE CRATER'S LIP 97 

can be made. The bodies of many of these men re- 
mained there on those barbs for weeks, for it is not 
at all easy to remove one once it has become firmly 
entangled. 

I saw a lot of the men lose their way in the lanes 
and wander into the barbs. Comrades helped them out 
whenever possible. I saw little Meekin, one of the 
smallest men in the outfit, stuck in the wire. He had 
lost his way and now he was caught. He knew that 
death stared him in the face. Around him other bodies 
were hanging limply just where they had been caught 
when a German bullet overtook them. Meekin's outlook 
was not better than theirs had been. He was tearing 
savagely at his clothing in an attempt to break away. 
As fast as he cleared from one barb he was caught 
on another. Swearing hard he kept at it, his hands 
torn and bleeding. I stopped to help him and man- 
aged to get him out minus his kilts. 

A minute later I turned the wrong way and found 
myself caught. Fischer came to my rescue and pulled 
me out. We were all but safe and yet in that narrow 
lane, in our own wire, lay the crooked path that had 
led many a brave lad to destruction when he was 
within a few feet of safety. 



VIII 



RATS AND COOTIES 



Captain Armett stood out in front of the com- 
pany reading orders. In front of him a couple of hun- 
dred soldiers were standing supposedly at rigid atten- 
tion. In fact, however, they were twisting and 
squirming and wiggling in a most unmilitary manner. 

As he read, Captain Armett frequently shrugged 
his shoulders and more than once sneaked his hand 
around under his arm and indulged in a good healthy 
scratch. 

I had squirmed and wiggled and twisted as often 
as any man in the ranks. I had one spot, though, 
that no amount of squirming seemed to reach. I could 
stand it no longer. I sneaked my hand into the front 
of my shirt and 

"What's the matter with you, McCoy?" Captain 
Armett demanded with some severity. 

"Nothing, sir," I responded, but I all but laughed 
aloud as I said it. 

The captain took a look up and down the line. 
Everywhere he saw squirming men. 

"Stand at ease. Stand easy," he commanded ex- 
98 



RATS AND COOTIES 99 

plosively and like a flash shot his own hand into 'his 
shirt and dug for all he was worth. We followed 
suit and in a few minutes were more comfortable than 
we had been for some time past. 

Armett was the most human sort of fellow in the 
world. He was born of the aristocracy, very close to 
the nobility and wrote an "Honourable" before his 
name. But he was as human and as democratic as any 
one. So human and so democratic was he that the 
cooties made friends with him just as multitudlnously 
as they did with the most humble of us. Poor old 
chap, he's dead long ago; died fighting bravely, too, 
but I've often thought it took more courage and more 
self-control to stand properly at attention when the 
cooties were attacking than it did to throw bombs 
when Fritz was on top of you. 

The fact was just this. Every man among us from 
Sir Douglas Haig down was loaded with cooties. 
Cooties mean lice and the lice of the trenches are h'lsr 
fellows who multiply faster than any other species and 
grow faster once born. Every man who goes into the 
trenches gets his full complement of these pets. Indeed 
he gets them before he goes in, for he is absolutely 
certain to pick them up in billets where he probably 
sleeps in the hay or straw of some barn. Cooties are 
perhaps the chief factor in proving that war is indeed 
hell. 



lOO KILTIE McCOY 

But cooties are also the chief factor in democratiz- 
ing the army. Everybody has them, and they are 
with you always. The young duke, the Scottish miner, 
the cockney, the tradesman, the Yankee, everybody 
regardless of former position or habits of cleanliness, 
regardless of nationality, race, color, creed or morals 
has cooties, and they snuggle just as close to the hide 
of the general as to that of the fighting man in his 
dugout or on the firing step. 

In our battalion v^ere, besides Captain Armett, two 
young noblemen, both of them privates. Tom Hamil- 
ton, the son of Lord Hamilton, and Gordon, the son 
of Lord Gordon. When the war first broke out, it was 
the young noblemen, the young aristocrats, the young 
dandies whose principal occupations heretofore had 
been to twirl their canes and twist their mustaches, 
considered useless and worthless and held in contempt 
by the working classes, who volunteered and w^ent first 
into the trenches. It was not the middle class, nor the 
toilers who did the volunteering, principally, but the 
young nobility. Thousands of their! went out when 
we had little more than our bare fists to fight with, 
and thousands of them are lying "somewhere in 
France" where they fell bravely fighting for democracy 
and liberty. They took the discomforts and the hard- 
ships and the dangers of the soldier's life without a 
murmur. All that they had been accustomed to at 



RATS AND COOTIES loi 

home was missing in France, yet they carried on with- 
out a whimper. 

"I think I'll take my morning tub," said Tom Ham- 
ilton as, after Captain Armett had dismissed us, he 
screwed the remains of a monocle into his eye. 

"I think you will, too, if I heard those orders cor- 
rectly," I responded. Hamilton and I were great 
chums. 

Included in those orders was one that this was 
the official bath day, and we had to take it whether we 
wanted to or not and we always wanted to, 

A few minutes later the whole battalion was march- 
ing light over the cobblestoned roads to a little town 
where there had once been a brewery. The vats of 
that brewery were now the bath tubs for thousands of 
soldiers, where every time they came out of the trenches 
they must take their bath whether they liked it or not. 

At the brewery we turned in our uniforms and 
were given a ticket for them, while our boots and 
equipment were carefully stacked up where we could 
most easily find them. Our underclothing all went 
into a general hamper, and we all went into the vats. 
Each vat held from eighteen to twenty of us, and as 
Tom, minus his monocle, slipped in he remarked in his 
droll way : "Aw ! How I appreciate my morning tub, 
old top, you know.'* 

But there was one thing about that "tub" which. 



I02 KILTIE McCOY 

while beneficial, was not fully appreciated at the time. 
The water was as hot as we could bear it and was 
well filled with creosote. This was to bring death to 
our cooties but incidentally it all but skinned us alive. 

From the "tub" we went out into a long yard 
where overhead pipes squirted ice-cold water on us. 
Lathered white we made a run through this outdoor 
shower and came back feeling like fighting cocks. 
Then after a good smart rub we were given clean 
underclothing and finally our uniforms which had been 
run through a steam chest in the hope that the cooties 
would cash in. Some of them did but others were only 
made the more lively by the heat. 

We marched back to our billets and an hour later 
I saw the son of Lord Hamilton and the son of Lord 
Gordon sitting side by side, each with a candle flame 
carefully cooking out the seams of his shirt where 
the cooties were still in hiding. Never a smile crossed 
the faces of these two young noblemen. Their work 
was of a most serious nature. 

The funniest pair of pals in our whole outfit was 
a little short Irishman named Casey and Big Tom Wil- 
son, the giant Scot. Casey was not more than five feet 
in height while Wilson was past six and built in pro- 
portion. They were always together and apparently 
neither ever had a serious thought. They couldn't 
even hunt cooties without making light of it. 



i 




Copyright lnj ii . /. ., \ . 
What's tlie Joke ? 



RATS AND COOTIES 103 

"Oh, such wee uns," Wilson would say pityingly, as 
he produced a couple of cooties and examined them 
affectionately. 

"Gi yer twa wee uns for a bi'g un," Casey would 
offer and after a lot of bartering, in which the relative 
merits of cooties large and cooties small were dis- 
cussed, the dicker would be made. One cootie more 
or less in one's shirt didn't matter a bit and these 
two chaps by making fun of it all probably enjoyed 
life better than those of us who took it so seriously. 

But cooties were not our only pets. We had others 
which while not so neighborly were equally numerous 
and quite as annoying. I made my acquaintance with 
> these latter pets my first night in the trenches. 

My deep dugout wasn't an ideal place for a night's 
rest, but I managed, finally, to find a position in which 
I could sleep, after a fashion. I was dozing when 
all at once one of the men sleeping near by leaped up 
and let out a most unearthly scream. Cold chills 
chased each other up and down my back, my flesh 
crept and my hair stood on end as I jumped up, more 
frightened than I ever was when facing death at the 
hands of Fritz. 

Having let out that one unearthly yell, the man, 
cursing to himself, calmly lay down again, pulled his 
coat over his face and was soon once more asleep. 
The other Middlesex men who had been disturbed 



I04 KILTIE McCOY 

merely moved uneasily, pulled their coats closer about 
their faces and slept on. 

Fischer had been badly frightened, too, and it was 
some time before either of us could get to sleep again. 

I had just dozed off when I was frightened stiff 
by feeling little cold, wet, clammy feet scamper across 
my face. It was my turn to jump and yell. 

"What was that?" I shouted. 

A Middlesex man who turned over, laughed scorn- 
fully and said : 

"Rats, rookie. Rats. Cover your face!" 

Well, I pulled my coat over my face and was just 
getting to sleep again when I felt more of those clammy 
feet scamper across my bare knees. This was one of 
the great objections we had to kilts. If you covered 
your face, then the rats would dance over your knees 
and if you covered your knees, they ran over your 
face. 

The rats of the trenches are enormously big things, 
too. They have plenty to feed on and grow to great 
size. Usually they keep out of sight during the day 
but at night they are everywhere. And they have 
their uses, too, for they give the first alarm if gas is 
coming by running out of their holes, squealing hard 
and trying to escape. For this reason the French do 
not kill them as we did. 

Most of them are harmless, for they have so much 



RATS AND COOTIES 105 

to eat they rarely get to a fighting stage. Once, how- 
ever, I did see one with fight in his system. I was 
walking through a travel trench when a huge rat came 
waddling out in front of me. I was close to him; 
another step and I would have crushed him, but I 
stopped. He stood up on his hind legs, curled back 
his lips and showed his teeth. He was ready to fight 
me. But my heavy boot caught him in the stomach 
and put an end to his disturbing career. 

But the rats served another good purpose besides 
detecting gas attacks. At night we used to creep 
into the cook's quarters, saw the ends of bags open 
and help ourselves to biscuits. Next day the cook 
would be swearing at the thieving rats. But one day 
somebody took a tin of bully beef and that was fatal. 

"By thunder," yelled the cook in a rage, "rats may 
steal biscuit but they don't carry can openers with 'em. 
Some of you robbers did that." 

And so the rats were exonerated and the cold eye 
of suspicion fell upon us whenever anything disap- 
peared. Somebody is always taking the joy out of 
life by trying to put too much in it. 



IX 

"A CALL UPON FRITZ 

"Get your bombs together. We go over at ten- 
thirty." 

We had been in France about two months when this 
word came down the line one evening. It meant that 
we were to pay a formal call on Fritz and for the 
first time hand him our bombs. For some days we had 
been making them and now we were to have a chance 
to use a lot of them right in Fritz's front parlor bed- 
room. 

Who would be the lucky ones chosen for the bomb- 
ing party? It was announced that only thirty could 
go. When volunteers were called for every man re- 
sponded, and I was fortunate enough to be one of those 
chosen. 

We had nothing but home-made bombs then, as I 
have said; bombs made of meat tins and filled with 
nails, wire, and the like. The fuses were lighted from 
cigarettes and the bombs were quite as likely to ex- 
plode in our hands as in Fritz's trenches. 

I had three of these infernal machines and was all 
excitement with the novelty of this new experience 

1 06 



A CALL UPON FRITZ 107 

when at ten-thirty we dimbed out of our front-line 
trenches. I had been through several attacks, had been 
up against mines, had been on wiring parties and all 
that sort of thing but this was the first time I had ever 
been on a bombing raid and the idea of this most dan- 
gerous of all activities thrilled me all over. 

At this point Fritz's trenches were only about 
eighty yards from ours. We were to make the attack 
under command of Captain Hay and Lieutenant Gra- 
ham. In those days we had no method of tearing up 
Fritz's entanglements other than by cutting the wires 
by hand. The artillery couldn't afiford enough ammuni- 
tion to place a barrage for us. It was a matter of 
nerve, and ability to work quietly. 

Silently we moved out through our own entangle- 
ments and slowly and painfully crawled to within 
about thirty feet of Fritz's wire. Here all but six of 
our party stopped and lay flat upon the ground. The 
six, myself included, under command of Lieutenant 
Graham, crawled softly forward to open the way 
through the wires and make ready for the rush. 

We were now so near the German trenches we 
could hear the sentries talking to one another, and 
occasionally the fragment of a song, for Fritz was 
apparently making merry in some of his dugouts. It 
took us probably fifteen minutes to worm our way to 
the first of the wires. Even though there was the noise 



io8 KILTIE "McCOY 

of occasional rifle or machine-gun fire with now and 
then the roar of a shell, it seemed under that terrible 
tension out there as if the slight scraping of our bodies 
on the ground as we crawled must have disturbed the 
kaiser's slumbers. 

Up there in front of us, I could see the heads of 
the sentries and hear them talking. How they failed 
to see me I couldn't for the moment understand. But 
when I recalled how, w^hen on sentry duty, I had been 
unable to see anything out in front, it was simple 
enough. I remembered also how I had frequently im- 
agined I could see things when there was nothing to 
see, and I realized that Fritz had the same hallucina- 
tions and that even though he might actually see one 
of us, he probably would lay it to his imagination and 
think nothing of it. 

At length we reached the wires, and began the 
hard and painful work in absolute silence. Crouching 
as close to the ground as possible we felt for a wire, 
located a post and then carefully cut the wire between 
where we were holding it and the post. To cut it 
otherwise would cause the wire to twang and instantly 
bring down the fire of Fritz upon us. 

We had no gloves. In the darkness, working 
chiefly by feeling, I frequently ran my hands against 
a barb. Each time the blood flowed and it was 
with the greatest difficulty I kept from crying out. 



A CALL UPON FRITZ 109 

I did think almost loud enough to have aroused Fritz 
it seemed to me. 

Slowly and painfully we worked on those wires. 
My hands were torn and bleeding and I was tired and 
worn by the nervous tension. At last we had cut 
through as far as we dared. The rest must be done 
as we rushed and in the face of all Fritz could give us. 

As carefully as we had crept forward, we must now 
creep back to the rest of our party. It took long min- 
utes to do this but at last we were tliere, and all was 
set for the dash. First we must all crawl as close as 
we could, and as soon as we were discovered we must 
rush, cut the wires, throw our bombs, grab a prisoner 
or two and get back. We had little chance in those 
days, against the odds Fritz was able to muster, to do 
much if any damage to his trenches. 

But before we began our forward movement we" 
had to provide ourselves with torches to light our 
bombs. It was a precarious task lighting our cigarettes 
out there in J^ront of Fritz and so near we could almost 
touch him. Carefully we shielded our matches, got our 
cigarettes going, covered them in the palms of our 
hands and began once more to crawl forward. 

I could hear my heart thump as I moved up toward 
the head I saw sticking up above the parapet directly 
in front of me. So hard did it pound that it seemed to 
me Fritz must certainly hear it. 



no KILTIE McCOY. 

I could see Fritz's head right there in front of me. 
I knew that close at his side lay a rifle loaded and 
ready for business. I knew that in that trench with 
him were many more Germans, that they had rifles 
and bombs, that they greatly outnumbered us. I knew 
that Fritz was watching for us and that any second 
now, he or some of his friends might see one of us. 
The discovery would instantly be followed by a shot 
and then the world would come to an end in a hurry. 

I moved another inch. I was very near indeed 
now; he must discover me soon. Another inch I 
pushed forward. The German started suddenly and 
then stood still. I was sure he had seen me. Crouch- 
ing close against a post and scarcely breathing, I waited 
for him to fire. 

I'm quite sure he saw me, but either he thought it 
but imagination or else he was fooled by one of his 
friends. The Germans are fond of dogs and their 
lines a^e overrun with them. Many a time Fritz has 
thought that what he saw out in front was one of his 
pets, when in another moment that "pet" was ramming 
a bayonet through him. So I suspect it was in this 
case. For an instant the sentry seemed tense and alert. 
Then I saw him turn his head and heard him speak to 
the man next on his right. 

For moments I held perfectly still. Then we began 
to advance once more. Slowly our thirty men were 



A CALL UPON FRITZ iii 

closing in on that trench, when a shout and a shot 
from the sentry at the right told us plainly we were dis- 
covered. There was no time for further introduc- 
tions. With a yell we rose up ; our cigarettes went to 
our mouths to be drawn into a blaze, we rushed for- 
ward lighting our fuses as we ran and tossed our 
bombs at Fritz. We cut the remaining wires and kept 
on. 

We lighted the fuses to our bombs as fast as we 
could, and threw them among the Germans. I saw 
one poor chap whose cigarette no sooner touched the 
fuse than the bomb went off. He was blown to pieces. 
In a moment we were in among the Germans. We 
cut them down and were cut down by them. A dugout 
was close by. 

"Come up out of there," I yelled as I stuck my head 
into the entrance. 

My reply was a bullet which passed over my shoul- 
der and caught Billy Waddell square in the face as he 
leaned toward me. He fell. In anger I grabbed a 
bomb and threw it down the dugout. I don't know 
what happend down there except that the bomb explod- 
ed. 

But we were in trouble. We didn't have a chance 
in that sort of raid. Fritz had all the advantage and he 
proceeded to make use of it. From every direction 
he poured a storm of shells and bullets upon us. It 



112 KILTIE McCOY 

seemed to me that every German gun in northern 
France was centered on our httle band of Scots. 

There was but one thing to do. We grabbed a 
couple of Germans and chmbed quickly out of the 
trenches and started back across No Man's Land as 
fast as our legs would carry us. Not all of us, how- 
ever, got into No Man's Land. Lieutenant Graham, as 
brave a man as ever lived, became entangled in the 
German wire and for weeks after his dead body 
remained there, a constant taunt to us all. Four others 
met similar fates so that afterward every time we 
looked over our own parapets we saw those five bodies 
hanging limply in Fritz's wires. 

How any of us ever got across those eighty 
yards I have no idea. Many men fell in that dash but 
it seems a miracle that any of us escaped. Captain 
Hay had one of our two prisoners. As we ran I saw 
the captain was having trouble with his man, so I 
hurried over to help him but just before I got there, 
Hay, apparently having exhausted his patience and 
being in no mood to argue under the existing condi- 
tion, pulled his revolver and shot the man. Then we 
both ran for our trenches and reached them in safety. 

And those miserable muddy trenches never looked 
as good as they did then. We had seen all the hell there 
is this side of the grave and we were safe. Anything 
that could protect us from what Fritz was handing 



A CALL UPON FRITZ 113 

out looked good to us now. But all our thirty men 
did not fare as well as L Just eleven of us escaped 
unwounded. Lieutenant Graham and four others were 
still hanging over there in Fritz's wires. Six or seven 
more were badly wounded but managed to get in, 
with the assistance of comrades, and seven or eight 
. others were unaccounted for and probably dead. 

We had a single prisoner to show for our losses. 
It seemed like a mighty small bag, but in a few 
moments we had reason to suspect we had inflicted 
greater losses on the Germans than we had believed. 

There came a roar like a gathering tornado. Then 
it burst. From all up and down the line the metal 
came our way ; until dawn Fritz deluged us with every- 
thing at his disposal. High explosive, shells big and 
little, shrapnel, minnenwerfers, machine guns, every- 
thing in his box of tricks was cut loose at us. For 
hours we crouched under whatever shelter we had 
and listened to Fritz pay us back for what our little 
band of thirty men had done in the few minutes we 
played around in his front parlor. 

While the bombardment was frightful, while it 
reaped its toll and while we gritted our teeth, wonder- 
ing if our time had come, we could not help but smile 
as we thought how thundering mad Fritz was to be 
willing to spend all that powder and metal in retaliation 
for the small damage done by one measly little raid. 



X 

PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 

"Captain Waur wants you at company headquar- 
ters." 

The runner had come into the trenches with that 
order for me. I knew and everybody else knew what 
it meant. A raid was to be put on and it wouldn't 
be like the raids we staged when we first came out. 
Two years of experience had taught us how to do the 
job to a nicety, now that we had everything to do it 
with. 

When it became noised through the trenches that 
I had been summoned to headquarters, everybody was 
on edge. Everybody was anxious to be in on the raid. 

At headquarters I was given an outline of the work 
before us. I was to select sixty men from our outfit 
to form the raiding party. Captain Martin and Lieu- 
tenant Bayliss would be the officers in command but I 
was to organize the job. It was to be a big raid at a 
point and at a time that even I was not informed of. 

I returned to the trenches and as a mere matter of 
form called for sixty volunteers from our battalion. 
Every man not only offered himself but demanded the 

114 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 115 

right to go. Then I was forced to pick the sixty lucky- 
ones. I took Fischer, of course, and Sergeant Geordie 
Freel, and big Tom Wilson, who was the most accurate 
bomber I ever saw, Glassford, Crow, Rocks, Tom 
Cherry, Bob Malcolm, Sandy McNaught and little 
Meekin. These were my steadies and the rest I chose 
more or less at random. 

We went back immediately to rest billets and set 
about with the utmost care to study every detail of 
the task before us. Incidentally we were treated like 
princes; we were given money to spend and time and 
opportunity to spend it; had the very best obtainable 
to eat and drink, and were permitted to stay up as late 
at night and sleep as late in the morning as we desired. 
Indeed the thought more than once came over me that 
we were being fatted for the slaughter. The expedi- 
tion we were to go on was a dangerous one ; all or none 
might come back. 

Out in an open field a system of trenches had been 
constructed as nearly like those we were to raid as 
our engineers had been able to devise. We found later, 
that they were an almost exact duplicate. 

Before these trenches we divided our forces into 
three parties and organized them, assigning each indi- 
vidual to his particular work. Each party was to con- 
sist of twenty men. Captain Martin was to have 
command of the party on the left flank. Lieutenant 



[Ii6 KILTIE McCOY 

Bayliss would command the center party and I was to 
have command of the party on the right flank. In 
addition there would be a signaler and a machine gun- 
ner with his gun on each flank. 

The commander of each party assigned his men 
to their respective duties. I was first bayonet man for 
my party. I picked Glass ford as second bayonet man 
to follow me and take my place if I got mine. Tom 
iWilson, of course, was made first bomber and Crow 
was picked for second. I also selected the bomb carri- 
ers and the rest of the party were the fighters who 
would clean up whatever we left undone and help us 
if we got more than we could handle. 

For two weeks we studied and planned and 
rehearsed this raid. 

"We want prisoners in this raid," said Colonel Sir 
George McCrae, who commanded the battalion. 
"You've been bringing me in a lot of coat-tails hereto- 
fore, this time I want the men. The coat-tails are valu- 
able, of course, but the prisoners are more so. Bring 
them in this time." 

As the Germans always carry their letters in their 
coat-tail pockets, we used to slash these off and bring 
them back. They were turned over to the Intelligence 
Department who learned whatever was possible from 
the letters and other documents they might contain. 
This is what the colonel meant by "coat-tails." 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS iii; 

Our work during this rehearsing period was pretty 
much the same each day. We spent hours studying 
carefully the trench system, the ground around it, the 
location of the dugouts and communicating trenches 
and the machine-gun emplacements. In the afternoon, 
by means of a stereoptican we were shown a picture of 
the trenches we were to attack. These pictures had 
been taken by our air men and were remarkably clear 
and distinct. We could easily locate the communi- 
cating trenches, the various traverses and bays and 
most of the dugouts. Indeed we could see many little 
white spots, which were the men standing in the trench- 
es at the time the photograph was taken. We could 
locate the machine-gun emplacements and everything 
else of value. Later developments showed these pic- 
tures also were wonderfully accurate. 

For hours we studied the pictures until we could 
walk through our duplicate trench system with our eyes 
closed and each man knew just where he was to go 
without looking. This was manifestly necessary since 
we would attack in the night. 

Each morning, too, we practised at the bombing 
school, to strengthen our arms and perfect our accu- 
racy just as a baseball pitcher "warms up" to 
strengthen his arm and to locate the plate. 

Too many times in the past when we had been told 
in advance of the time and place of a raid, we had 



ii8 KILTIE McCOY 

found Fritz fully informed and waiting to receive us. 
This time we knew nothing at all about either the time 
or the place. 

It was about midnight when Captain Martin very 
quietly aroused us. 

"Come on, boys," he said softly. "We go over at 
two-thirty. Get busy." 

He didn't have to speak twice. We were all pep 
immediately. We jumped into our clothes and made 
ready as quickly as possible. We took no equipment 
whatever except our rifles, ammunition and bombs. 
Every letter, note-book and scrap of anything that 
might serve to identify us was left behind, even our 
identification tags were removed. If any of us were 
left over tliere Fritz would find nothing about us to 
tell who we were or where we came from. 

In tlie darkness and excitement of the raid there 
is no time for introductions, so we blackened our faces 
and hands to distinguish friend from foe. A white 
face or a white hand meant death without question. 

But we couldn't refrain even in this most ominous 
hour from a little fun. I had picked two rookies as 
members of the raiding party — we always took along 
a few of them to break them in and thus keep up our 
supply of experienced men, and when we blackened 
each other's faces, somebody produced a box of Cherry 
Boot Black and smeared the faces of these two brave 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS J19 

but inexperienced recruits. It was weeks before that 
boot polish wore off. Indeed fully a month later when 
one of these lads was killed, I saw spots of that boot 
polish on him as he lay dead on the field of honor. 

We carefully sharpened and greased our bayonets, 
this latter so they would not gleam in the light of star 
shells. 

Outside two big motor lorries were waiting to trans- 
port us as near to the trenches as they could go, and it 
was not long before we were in the front-line at a point 
where an old tree stump stuck up in No Man's Land. 
That stump was a welcome landmark a couple of hours 
later. 

We were to make our attack in front of an English 
outfit and as we passed among them they slapped us on 
the back and said : "Good luck, Jock. Give 'em hell." 

The German trenches were only about four hun- 
dred yards from us as we went over. Cautiously we 
ran along to within about fifty yards of where Fritz 
lived, then we divided into our three formations, lay 
down on the ground and waited. During our advance 
the star shells were continually going up, making it 
necessary for us to "freeze" every moment or two. 
Our own star shells were bursting and our own artil- 
lery and machine guns were rattling along about as 
usual, perhaps a little more noisily than common so as 
to drown any sounds we might make. 



[I20 KILTIE McCOY 

Fritz's wires had already been pretty well blown 
up by our artillery, so all we had to do when the time 
came was to rush. The way would be clear. The 
artillery was supposed to open up at two-thirty. I lay 
there on the ground watching the hands of my watch 
gradually approach that hour. Our watches had all 
been timed before we went in. For five minutes the 
minute hand crept slowly but steadily down toward the 
thirty mark. The minute hand was almost there. Just 
a few seconds more. I held my breath. 

A roar. A crash. The ground shook. Flame 
burst over Fritz's trenches. The air, filled with 
screeches, vibrated with the concussion. I breathed 
again. The artillery had opened on the second. 

A perfect tornado of iron screamed over us as we 
lay there. We could picture Fritz scrambling to his 
dugouts as fast as his fat legs could carry him, and we 
laughed. 

*'Give 'em hell, Briton!" screamed Glassford who 
lay alongside of me. And he laughed until the tears 
rolled down his cheeks. 

Fritz's line looked like a Fourth of July celebra- 
tion. Everywhere, the glare of the bursting shells. 
Above him fifty-seven varieties of colored signal rock- 
ets decorated the heavens. Green, red, white, blue, he 
opened the whole box at once and sent them up fran- 
tically yelling for help. 




CovVTight by Underwood <fc Underwood 
A Kiltie at a Gas Sentry Post 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 121 

"Give 'em hell, Briton!" we laughed and yelled. 
"Can't you hear him holler for help. Give 'em hell, 
Briton!" 

Out there we cheered those artillerymen on to 
greater exertions. They could not feed those guns nor 
pull the lever fast enough for us. All up and down the 
front as far as we could see the same thing was going 
on. Dozens of big raids were to be pulled off this 
night. For fifty miles, perhaps, the bombardment was 
on. Fritz knew he was going to be hit but just where 
was another question. 

How anything could be left of him was more than 
we could understand for it looked as if every square 
inch of his trenches was getting a piece of iron. 

"Give 'em hell, Briton !" We cheered and laughed 
ourselves sick. 

For five minutes the artillery was to "give 'em 
hell." At two-thirty-five we were to give them our 
dose. I was watching my old timepiece. That min- 
ute hand crept along steadily. Just before it reached 
the mark the order was passed: 

"Get ready." 

Every man took a deep breath, hitched his belt a 
little, grasped his rifle tightly and gathered himself for 
the spring. 

"Right." 

With a yell we leaped up and at them. The artil- 



122 KILTIE McCOY 

lery lifted a trifle to clear us. In a few seconds we 
had covered the fifty yards between us and Fritz. The 
artillery was now playing all around the sector we were 
to attack, cutting off reinforcements. 

Like mad men we leaped on his parapet. I was 
ahead, where I belonged. With my bayonet pointed 
downward, I jumped with a yell into the trench. I had 
expected a reception committee but none was there to 
greet me. 

The rest of my party came in in proper order; 
Glassford, the second bayonet man, then Wilson, first 
bomber, then the second bomber, the bomb carriers and 
the clean-up men. 

According to plan I turned to the right, and hold- 
ing my bayonet firmly ahead of me, started along the 
trench. I had taken but a few steps in the darkness 
when my bayonet came in contact with something. I 
drove it forward and a German yawped and dropped 
squealing to the ground. 

"I've got one of them," I yelled back, and started 
forward once more. 

"Toss 'em one in the traverse," I called to Wilson. 
I had reached the traverse and must now pass around 
a corner, not a pleasant thing always to do. With 
perfect coolness and precision, Wilson tossed his bomb. 

"Now one in the bay," I shouted. 

Wilson dropped it accurately. 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 123 

I crouched close to the wall and cautiously stuck 
my head around the corner. By the light of bursting 
shells I saw a couple of forms huddled at the bottom 
of the trench. Wilson's bomb had done its perfect 
work. 

I passed through the traverse, and adopting the 
same tactics looked into the bay. There again I saw a 
few bodies lying. 

I passed along but we always took good care to 
make sure the seeming dead were really dead, for Fritz 
has a dirty habit of playing dead until we pass and 
then shooting us in the back. Our clean-up men fol- 
lowed closely and took good care of them now. 

According to the picture there should be a dugout 
in this bay. Sure enough here it was. 

"Come out of that. Hands up!" I yelled. 

A flood of growling, guttural German came up at 
me. 

Wilson dropped a bomb down the entrance and 
followed it with a smoke-bomb to make sure to finish 
the job. There was no more conversation. We came 
to another dugout. 

"Come out of that and keep yer hands up!" I 
yelled. 

Eight Germans came, the last a non-commissioned 
officer. His hands were not up, which was a bad sign, 
and he had a dirty smirk on his face that looked like 



124 KILTIE McCOY 

treachery. He made an insulting remark about the 
Scots, and httle Meekin, who always went blood mad 
when once he got into action, ran his bayonet through 
the N. C. O. and left him where he fell. 

Another German startled us by pleading for his 
life in perfectly good English. He told us he had 
formerly worked as a waiter at the Central Hotel in 
Glasgow and recognized some of us. He said he didn't 
want to fight us but was forced to. 

"Shut up, you damned traitor," yelled Meekin, and 
started to run his bayonet through this one, too. 

"Keep still, you silly ass," I said. "We want pris- 
oners to-night. We've coat-tails enough as it is." 

So we passed the German back and went our way. 
Wherever we found a dead body we slashed off the 
coat-tails. When we took a prisoner we slashed off 
his coat-tails, too, so we'd have the information in case 
■we later lost the prisoner. 

It was fast work; we had no time to argue; we 
just did all the damage we could as we went along. 
We were limited to one hour's time and now every- 
thing went exactly on schedule. If we were not out in 
one hour we'd be caught by our own barrage which 
would at a prearranged moment pour forth all it had 
on the trenches we were now in, in order to demolish 
them entirely. 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 125 

The hour was up. I heard the fish horn which 
Captain ]\Iartin had swung around his neck, and blew 
mine in reply. Promptly we turned about and beat it 
for the spot where we had entered. At the same time 
the machine guns on our flanks opened up to prevent 
Fritz from following us. 

Major Stephenson stood at the place where we 
were to go out giving a lift to each man as he came 
along. The major had been anxious to go with us but 
could not, so he waited at Fritz's parapet and as he 
helped each man up he slapped him on the back and 
said: 

"Good boy. You've done nobly." 

We were all out, and it was every man for him- 
self across No Man's Land and back home. Fritz 
had opened up his barrage and the shells and bullets 
were peppering the ground all about us. It was dan- 
gerous business getting back, more dangerous than it 
had been coming over. Besides many of us had pris- 
oners to look after which added to the difficulties. 

By the light of bursting shells I could see men run- 
ning in all directions, weird figures seen for a moment 
in that strange light and then lost in the blackness 
again. And nearly every man seemed to have a pris- 
oner; it looked as if we must have captured the whole 
German army. Once in a while I saw a Scot with 



126 KILTIE McCOY 

about a half -inch of his bayonet stuck into the seat 
of a German's trousers intimating that it was time to 
hustle for the next shell-hole. 

One of our men had two prisoners. They tried to 
play funny with him but he wasn't in a mood right 
then to be trifled with, so he stuck his bayonet through 
them and left them out there. 

It was my business to keep watch for any of our 
men who might be wounded or otherwise in trouble 
and to help them. I found one lad with tw^o prisoners 
who didn't appear to be on their very best behavior. 
I took one of them and perhaps I got the more frac- 
tious. Suddenly I found it altogether advisable to 
squat down in a shell-hole for the time being. And it 
seemed to be to my interest, too, that I should be con- 
cealed as much as possible and that Fritz should not 
know I was down there, lest some good marksman 
pick me off when I come out. My prisoner, however, 
didn't seem to catch my point of view. His big idea 
seemed to be that it w^as highly desirable his pals back 
there should know we were in that particular shell- 
hole. He therefore kept sticking his head up until I 
got somewhat peevish and grabbed my friend Fritz by 
the back of the head and shoved his face down into 
the water that covered the bottom of the shell-hole. 
I kept it there until he was all but drowned, and then 
I informed him in language at least firm that unless 



PRISONERS AND COAT-TAILS 1271 

he kept his knob out of sight I'd see that he got tlie 
permanent water cure. He obeyed. 

It was two hours later when the last one of our 
party tumbled into our trenches. We had been guided 
in our ducking and dodging by that blessed old stump. 
One man only of our sixty had suffered any ill effects; 
a signaler had been painfully wounded although able 
to get back all right. We brought with us nineteen 
prisoners in all and a whole wad of coat-tails that we 
turned over to the English outfit, which gave us a big 
hand as we passed through on the way back to the 
lorries that were waiting to take us to billets. Here we 
were given plenty of money and went on "our own" 
to spend it. The colonel, even, had us up to his quar- 
ters and dished us up a real dinner. Oh, we were a 
cocky lot of Scotchmen until our battalion returned 
from the front line, then all our glory evaporated and 
we went back to the regular grind. 



XI 

HARD LUCK BATTALION 

"Have a look here." 

I mounted the fire step. 

Over toward Fritz's line we could see a yellowish- 
white mist. It was pretty dense down near the ground 
and in the hollows. 

We were on duty at the Brick Stacks near Bethune. 
It was about six o'clock in the evening. I was in 
the trench when the man on sentry duty called me to 
have a look. 

"Do yer ken what that is?" he asked. 

"I'm not sure," I responded. "But it might be gas." 

You see, we had never yet had any experience with 
gas and were not quite sure what it was like. 

The rats began running squealing from their holes. 
That was a pretty sure sign. 

"Let's take no chances," I said, and jumping down 
from the fire step I grabbed the chunk of iron and 
began beating on the gas gong. Immediately the 
alarm was taken up all along the line for perhaps fifty 
miles and maybe fifteen miles back the "tong, tong" 
made the whole of that section of France a bedlam. 

128 



HARD LUCK BATTALION 129 

At that time we did not have gas masks such as 
they wear to-day. We had only sponges that we 
strapped over our mouths and noses. They were im- 
perfect and many a man suffered ill effects even with 
his mask on. 

Hastily I put my mask on. Everywhere the men 
were making a mad scramble for them. Some, in 
their excitement, tore the sponges and tried to hold 
them on with their hands. We had not yet learned 
the terrible results from gas, and so did not fully 
appreciate the mask. Many of the boys had become 
tired of the heavy sponges beating against their shoul- 
ders and had laid them aside. Now in their excitement 
they couldn't find them. Meantime the gas was com- 
ing fast. 

I saw one man near me turn a sickly greenish- 
yellow. He had no mask; he couldn't find it. His 
eyes began to bulge from his head; froth filled his 
mouth and hung from his lips. He began tearing at 
his throat. The air wouldn't go into his lungs. He 
fell and rolled over and over, gasping and crying out 
while with his nails he tore open his throat, even 
wrenched out his windpipe. Then his chest heaved a 
time or two, and he lay still. Death had brought its 
blessed relief. 

Somehow I couldn't take my eyes from him. That 
torn and bleeding throat, those wild eyes, the froth, 



I30 KILTIE McCOY 

the greenish-yellow color all fascinated me. I stood 
looking at him in horror and in fear. 

An arm came over my shoulder and grabbed at my 
mask and at the same time a harsh cry, like the croak 
of a jackdaw, sounded in my ear. 

I whirled around. Never shall I forget the sight 
before me. There stood a man without a mask. The 
gas had already got him. He was mad with agony, 
but he still knew that he was suffering for lack of a 
mask, so he tried to snatch mine. His face was dis- 
torted almost beyond recognition. With one hand he 
clawed at his throat and with the other, the fingers 
bent like the talons of a great bird, he reached for 
my mask. 

With almost superhuman strength, in his madness, 
he rushed at me. I tried to hold him off. If he got 
my sponge Fd die and it would not save him. One 
thing only was left for me to do. I struck the poor 
chap and I struck hard. He went down and for a few 
moments thrashed wildly about. Then he lay still. 

Shells were falling around us. Fritz had opened up 
a barrage and right behind the gas and the barrage, 
came Fritz himself. Our dugouts were choked with 
dead ; our trenches were littered with bodies. 

"Fall back," came the order. 

With hundreds of others I scrambled out of that 
death trench. The barrage lay to the rear of the trench 



HARD LUCK BATTALION 131 

but death in that was preferable to death by the gas. 
Through it we raced. Here and there a man fell. 
Some were hit, some were falling from the effects of 
the gas, which seeped through their sponges. I began 
to have difficulty in breathing. 

"Am I going to die as those other two lads did?" 
The question kept racing through my mind. I won- 
dered if I was already turning greenish-yellow. My 
lungs hurt me, my breath came hard. If I must die, 
why couldn't a rifle ball overtake me. 

My mouth was dry and parched, my tongue was 
thick. I wanted air and was sorely tempted to tear 
the sponge from my mouth. I had just will power 
enough to restrain myself, though my head swam and 
my legs were faltering. 

What was that? A whiff of real oxygen came 
through my sponge; a little breath of fresh air fanned 
my face. Thank God! A gentle breeze had sprung 
up and had blown away the gas. I reached a first- 
aid station. Back to the hospital I was sent for obser- 
vation ; the gas I had Inhaled might yet result fatally. 
For three weeks I was in the casualty clearing sta- 
tion, but out there in the trenches, around the Brick 
Stacks, three hundred of our battalion lay dead after 
having suffered tortures of which no man can tell. 

As I thought of those brave lads done to death 
through the foul cunning and inhumanity of the Hun, 



132 KILTIE McCOY 

I longed for the time to come when once more I could 
get back at them and I swore to show no mercy from 
that time forth. 

That determination was strengthened, too, by an 
occurrence I witnessed in the hospital. It was not nec- 
essary that I should remain in bed, as I was being held 
merely for observation, and as a matter of precaution. 
In that station one group of huts was set aside for 
wounded German prisoners, who were given the same 
care and attention that our own men were given, the 
only difference being that armed guards kept an eye 
on them. We could never trust the Hun even when 
he was being kindly cared for as a wounded prisoner. 

I happened to walk into the German hut one day 
and was looking them over with some interest, when 
my attention was attracted to a very pretty little Eng- 
lish Red Cross nurse who was busily engaged tending 
these barbarians. She was as cheerful, as kindly, as 
solicitous for them as she would have been for us. As 
she hastened past one not badly wounded prisoner 
she stopped, stooped over and said something to him. 
He, with true credit to the ktdtur they teach, spat in 
her face. 

The English sentry happened to be handy, saw it 
and beat me to the prisoner, I'm sorry to say. The 
Tommy dropped his rifle and proceeded to give that 



HARD LUCK BATTALION 133 

German one of the fanciest trimmings you ever saw 
given to any man. 

Of course a yell went up immediately. Guards 
came rushing in, the sentry was arrested and ordered 
before a court-martial. He made no defense what- 
ever, simply admitted he had beaten up the prisoner, 
and the court sentenced him to forty-eight days field 
punishment number one, which means being spread- 
eagled on a gun-carriage wheel. In pronouncing the 
sentence, the court said: 

"You are a soldier. Your government provides 
you with a rifle and bayonet. You are not here to 
demean yourself by fighting with your fists as if you 
were in a brawl." 

Incidentally, I am glad to add that man never 
served a second of his sentence. By what means he 
escaped it, I don't know, but I do know that I would 
have enjoyed the honor of being crimed, tried and 
sentenced for his offense. 

But our losses in that gas attack were just a repe- 
tition of the old, old story with us. The Cameronian 
Scottish Rifles had earned their title of the "Hard Luck 
Battalion," and were living up to it. All over France 
we were known by this name. Drafted men hated to be 
assigned to our battalion. The jinx which had attached 
itself to us never once left us. We never had nor- 



134 KILTIE McCOY 

mal casualties, we always lost our men by the hun- 
dreds. If we got a draft of one hundred men to- 
day, we were certain to lose that many the next 
time we went into a scrap. We had made a bad 
start back there near Fleurbaix when we lost six men 
in the communicating trenches before ever we reached 
the front line, and death and disaster were with us ever 
after. 

Many times there had been talk of disbanding us. 
At one time the word came along that we were to be 
sent back to England to be reorganized and to get a 
new start. That suited us all. We would be going 
home, and with a new start perhaps we would have a 
chance for a fair fight the next time we came into 
France. 

But the rumors always fizzled out. Instead of 
going back to reorganize, we would receive a new 
draft, fill up our ranks, go into action and once more 
get cut up. 

When we had first come out we numbered one 
thousand men strong. The day after that gas attack 
we had but three hundred, and mighty few of these 
were the men who left Hamilton that night back in 
the spring of 191 5. 

I was out of hospital now and feeling fine. We 
were in reserve trenches near Annequin, and had 
received another draft. "A Company" had gone for- 



HARD LUCK BATTALION 135 

ward to relieve a company of Gordons in the first 
line, and just as the trenches were crowded witli the 
men of the two outfits, Fritz touched off two mines. 
He got our first two hnes of trenches and one hundred 
and fifty men and twelve officers out of our battalion 
alone while the Gordons suffered equally. 

More talk of disbanding, but we got another draft 
and went back at it once more. Fritz put on a bomb- 
ing raid. It was mighty successful and we lost one 
hundred and sixty men. The jinx remained right with 
us. 

At last, however, official notice came that the Cam- 
eronian Scottish Rifles, the "Hard Luck Battalion," 
was to be broken up, to be sent to other units to fill their 
ranks. We went back to the billets near Beuvry and 
there the division was made. Fischer, Geordie Free- 
land, Glass ford and the bunch I had always trained 
with to the number of two hundred went to the Royal 
Scots ; anotlier two hundred went to the Fifth Scottish 
Rifles ; another hundred, including Jimmie Armstrong, 
who had first taught me to execute "Right turn," 
went to the East Yorks, an English regiment. 

Armstrong later got a commission. He didn't want 
one because he had a family back home and officers 
get no allotment for their families and a first lieu- 
tenant but about two dollars a day pay. It is a relic 
of the old British army custom when officers were 



136 KILTIE McCOY 

of the nobility or rich men who bought their commis- 
sions and who needed no pay. The colonel of Jimmie's 
new outfit, however, was so anxious that he take a com- 
mission that, being a rich man, he agreed to pay from 
his own pocket the allotment Jimmie was then draw- 
ing for his family. 

One interesting result of the division of the Cam- 
eronian Scottish Rifles was that we forever left our 
kilts behind. 

It was a sorrowful day in Beuvry when the leave- 
taking came. Disaster had bound all the members of 
our battalion mighty close together and the parting 
was not easy. Tears glistened in the eyes of many a 
rough and hardy soldier as we stood at attention while 
the pipers played Auld Lang Syne and we watched 
Colonel Sir George McCrae leave us for the last time. 
He was a fine gentleman and a soldier and every man 
of us respected and loved him. When our battalion 
was split up, he went back to Blighty, forever out of 
the war. 

Our colonel gone, our battalion separated into its 
three bodies and each yelling good-by to the others we 
marched away to the great base camp where we had 
stopped for a couple of days when we first reached 
France. We found a quarter of a million men there 
and more arriving every day. They were there from 



HARD LUCK BATTALION 137 

every corner of the great British Empire — Scots, Irish, 
English, Welsh, Canadians, Anzacs, East Indians, 
everything. 

As we marched into the camp we were met by a 
big major with a voice Hke thunder who acted as our 
guide. It was dark when we entered and a young 
captain, adjutant of the camp, saw or heard us coming. 
He had been out only a few months and had never 
seen the firing line. He suppossed we were a gang of 
rookies and so thought it necessary to show at once 
what a regular fellow he was, so he began bawling 
at us in the darkness, when the big voice of our major 
broke in. 

"Say. Who are you?" he rumbled. 

The young captain bristled and informed us just 
who he was with all the trimmings at his command. 

"Maybe you can't see who I am," growled our 
major. "But you'll 'Sir' me and you'd better be pretty 
decent to these men, too, for they have been through 
more than ever you will go through if you live a hun- 
dred years. You wouldn't make any mistake either 
if you took off your hat to them. Come on, now, 
where do you want us?" 

The youngster came to earth immediately and we 
were assigned our quarters, and here they kept us 
for a month. It was just before the big Somme push 



138 KILTIE McCOY 

and they wanted us to rest up and recuperate until 
such time as the Royal Scots should most need a draft 
of veterans. 

That month was a wild one, too. At first the 
young officers in the camp didn't know we were vet- 
erans and we didn't take the trouble to tell them. 
They would hike us out to the training field, give us 
a lot of instruction in bombing, raids, patrolling and 
other things they had never seen and which we had 
done dozens of times. We, of course, would do it 
the practical instead of their theoretical way until they 
were in despair at our refusal to learn our lessons. 

They would start us on a charge for a line of dum- 
mies, and we would keep right on running until we 
found a soft spot, when we would sit down and light 
our cigarettes. Or they would start us on maneuvers, 
when we would get over into the woods and stay there. 
We were such a source of annoyance to the young 
officers and such a disorganizing influence in the camp 
that at last they let us alone. 

It was indeed a big vacation, the first real one we 
had had since we came out. Then came the word 
that we were to move away to join our new friends 
the Royal Scots and away we marched for what, up 
to that time, was the biggest battle of the war. 



XII 

COWARDS 

When a man tells you he wasn't afraid under fire, 
you put it down he is — well, he's talking to hear him- 
self talk. Ever}^ man who ever went under fire is 
scared stiff. Some have such control of themselves 
that they cover up their fright better than others, but 
all are frightened I don't care who they are. 

Many a time I've been walking through a trench, 
heard a shell go screaming overhead, cocked my eye 
up at it and have said : "Aw, go to hell ! You couldn't 
hurt anybody." But all the time, down underneath, 
I've really felt like ducking into a dugout. 

While I say everybody is frightened, I must add 
that in the nearly three years I was in France I never 
knew a coward. I've seen men go trembling and 
white-lipped into the fight, but they drove themselves 
to it. That takes more courage than to go when you 
have better control of yourself and apparently are 
not frightened. 

It makes interesting reading to tell of the coward 
who was shot at sunrise, or of the man convicted of 
cowardice and awaiting the firing squad who is saved 

139 



I40 KILTIE McCOY 

by chance finally to die a hero. I have no such stories, 
for, as I say, I never knew a coward while I was on 
the western front. 

The man who is afraid, who shows it in every 
move, yet who forces himself forward, is a hero rather 
than a coward, to my mind, I knew one such fellow 
in our battalion and I never miss an opportunity to 
pay tribute to his memory. 

Jimmie Keene's father died when Jimmie was a 
little lad. He was reared by his mother and sisters, 
and being the only boy was petted, and tended with 
the greatest care, and was never taught to wait on 
himself. 

Jimmie never smoked, swore, played rough games 
with the other boys, never had a fight, never did any- 
thing that other boys do. He grew up a tall, lanky, 
not overly strong, studious youth. His morals were 
above reproach, and while his speech was somewhat 
sissified he was a lad with the highest ideals and 
with the highest sense of duty. That sense of duty 
told him he should enlist in defense of his country, 
and so he did not wait to be drafted. 

With white face and trembling knees, Jimmie 
Keene presented himself to the recruiting officer and 
was accepted. From that moment he never ceased to 
fear ; from that moment he never had a second when he 
was not expecting death, when his heart was not pound- 



COWARDS 141 

ing twice as hard as It should. From that moment 
he suffered all the torments that fear can devise until 
more than two years later, doing his duty like a man, 
looking Fritz straight in the eye, he fell fighting with 
his last breath. 

Jimmie trembled all the way into France. He 
never ceased to tremble all the time he was there. In 
some mysterious manner, I never figured out how, but 
probably because he thought it his duty, Jimmie asked 
to be assigned to the bombers, commonly known as 
the "Suicide Squad." Bombers are not usually long 
lived and why Jimmie ever picked that position of 
constant danger I don't know. 

My first real experience with him came after we 
had been out a year or so, when I was left in charge 
of a trench with a listening post out in front. Every 
two hours one man accompanied by a bomber went to 
the listening post to relieve the two who were there. 

It was about midnight when I called Jimmie Keene 
to go out as bomber with Long Tom Crow. Keene 
turned deathly white and began to tremble when I told 
him what he was to do. For a moment he looked at 
me with bulging eyes; he couldn't speak, he couldn't 
move, his lips were trembling, and his knees sagged 
until I thought he was going to fall. 

"Hurry up," I said to him gruffly, hoping by that 
means to steady him somewhat, for though we all 



142 KILTIE McCOY 

knew his weakness we all loved the lad just the same. 
"It's time to relieve those fellows; they don't want 
to spend the night out there." 

I could see it was only by the most tremendous 
mental and physical effort that Ji'mmie forced himself 
to move. Crow was ready and those two lads out in 
front were anxious to be relieved. 

"Hurry up, Keene," I called to him. To save his 
life that boy couldn't get into his equipment. He 
dropped it, fumbled around with it, did everything but 
put it on straight. His hands trembled and he didn't 
know what he was doing half the time. I could see 
he was useless and besides it was past relief time. 

"Go on to your dugout," I said to Jimmie. "I'll get 
another man." 

Jimmie instantly recovered himself; his sense of 
duty had been aroused. 

"Corporal," he said in his somewhat ladylike way, 
"I must go. It is my duty to go. You insult me by 
sending somebody in my place." 

"Go on to your dugout," I said. "You're in no 
'condition to go out there. I've got to have a man who 
isn't afraid." 

"I know I'm afraid, Corporal," he replied. "I'm 
deathly afraid, but it is my duty to go, and nobody 
else must take my chance." 

"If you want to go," I said at length, "you sit 



COWARDS 143 

here for two hours and get your nerve and I'll send 
you out on the next relief." Now that next trick 
would be even more dangerous than this one because 
at coming-in time the light would be good for 
snipers. 

"I shall be here and ready," said Jimmie. "It is 
my duty." 

I got another bomber for Crow, and two hours 
later when I went to the place where I had left Keene, 
he was sound asleep but there waiting to take his turn. 
When I woke him he began to tremble again, and I 
was about to pass him up once more but he wouldn't 
have it. It was his duty and whether he was afraid 
or not he would go. 

He was to go out with Tom Cherry, much to 
Tom's disgust. We had to help him over the para- 
pet, and I went along with them to the listening post 
to brace up poor Jimmie if he needed it. He stumbled 
around, dropped things, tripped over the wires and 
had an awful time of it, but he got out there and he 
stayed there through his trick. I felt rather guilty as 
I left them there for I knew that if anything happened 
Tom Cherry would be all alone. 

But they came back all right and the look of relief 
on Jimmie's face when he dropped Into the compara- 
tive safety of the trenches was most wonderful. 

The following day Fritz strafed us viciously, and 



144 KILTIE McCOY 

all day long Jimmie Keene was white as a sheet, unable 
to eat and suffering torment every minute. 

"What are you trembling so for?" I demanded of 
him, when once I happened to be near him. 

"I'm afraid, Corporal," he responded truthfully. 
"I'd give anything in the world if I could be like the 
rest of you. But I can't. I've been afraid ever sitice 
I joined up. I've been afraid all my life." 

"What in the world made you join up?" I asked. 

"It was my duty," he responded with some show 
of forcefulness. "My country needs every man. I 
wouldn't wait to be drafted. It was my duty to come 
and I came." 

"But your duty doesn't make a good soldier out 
of you when you are so frightened," I said. 

"Because it's my duty I can do anything whether 
I'm frightened or not," he said with a flash of real 
spirit. "If I am ordered to charge that machine gun 
over there all alone, I can do it because it's my duty 
to obey orders." 

I began to get a new estimate of Jimmie Keene. 
It occurred to me that it took vastly more courage for 
him to force himself to do his duty, overcoming his 
fears, than for me to do the things I did without first 
having to undergo the physical and mental anguish 
necessary to put Jimmie in motion. 

A few days later Fritz was giving us another tre- 



COWARDS 145 

mendous strafing, knocking our trenches about vi- 
ciously. Everything he had in his box was being let 
loose at us. It was terrifying and nerve racking 
enough for any of us, but for poor Jimmie Keene 

"Bang" went a pineapple, a bomb Fritz used with 
telling effect. It exploded in our trench and Jimmie 
got a small piece of it in the face. The rest of it en- 
tered the back of a poor chap standing near, and he 
went down with eighteen ugly wounds. 

It was not Pat McCoy, nor Jim Fischer nor any 
of us who were called fearless, but Jimmie Keene, his 
own face bleeding, who rushed to the aid of the much 
wounded lad. Jimmie knelt by the side of the boy and 
while the blood streamed down his own face, quickly 
opened the wounded man's first-aid packet and began 
with trembling but careful fingers to bind up those 
gaping wounds. We watched Jimmie work, and none 
of us offered to interfere. We wanted to see if he 
really did have the stuff after all. 

All the material in the wounded man's first-aid 
packet was soon exhausted, but without hesitation 
Jimmie Keene opened his own though this was against 
the strictest orders. Each man's packet is for his own 
use. He must not use it on others. I can imagine 
that it wrenched Jimmie's heart thus to disobey orders, 
for his record was as clean as the day he joined up. 

"Get away from there," I said to him at length, for 



146 KILTIE McCOY 

I had become ashamed of letting Jimmie do that work 
in his condition. "Let me look after him." 

"If you please, Corporal," said Jimmie, "I'll finish. 
It's my duty." 

And Jimmie did finish and when the stretcher- 
bearers came for the wounded man, Jimmie walked 
with them back to the dressing station to have his own 
wound bandaged. 

From that minute Jimmie Keene was mothered 
once more by every man in the outfit. Then one day 
on the Somme we got mixed up in a desperate scrap. 
We were hard pressed and every man was fighting for 
his life. We had attacked and were out in the open. 
I just happened to find myself near Jimmie. He was 
white as chalk and his knees seemed sagging. It was 
apparent that it was only by the greatest effort he 
was able to keep going. But all the time I noticed he 
was throwing his bombs with the greatest precision 
and with deadly effect. 

'A few minutes later I chanced to look toward 
Jimmie again, and I saw him fall. I knew he had 
been hit and hurried over to him. Three machine-gun 
bullets had caught him before he went down and there 
was just a breath or two of life in him wdien I reached 
his side. 

"Please, Corporal, tell mother I did my duty," he 
whispered and was dead. I took his identification 



COWARDS 147 

disk, his watch and some other trinkets to send home 
to his folks. Jimmie had died doing his duty when 
every second his heart was pounding the germ of fear 
through his system. Jimmie Keene was a better man 
that ever Pat McCoy was, and he was honest in his 
Hfe, too. 

Only once during my service I knew of men being 
charged and tried for cowardice, and they were men 
from my own company. This was on the Somme. 

We were in a trench which came to a dead-end. 
The Staffords' pioneers were to dig out that dead- 
end and to connect with another of our trenches. We 
were under a tremendous fire all the time. Our bat- 
talion was to go out in front to act as cover for the 
Staffords while they were at work. An officer of the 
Staffords was walking along the rear of the trench 
showing his men where to dig. Our trench was 
crowded at that time, for we were in, waiting to go 
out in front and the Staffords were there waiting to 
begin their digging. 

The officer up on the parapet saw men out in 
front, and assuming it was a covering body, jumped 
across the trench and walked over to them. We were 
paying no attention to him nor to anything out in 
front. All at once we heard a yell and the officer came 
running back crying: "It's Fritz. Give him hell! 
Give him hell !" He looked as if half his head had been 



148 KILTIE McCOY 

blown away by the bomb the boche threw at him when 
he walked right out upon them. He died shortly after 
from his wounds. 

It was lucky he had gone out, for otherwise Fritz 
would have been in upon us before we knew it. As it 
was he came quickly enough and it was hard fighting 
in the crowded condition of the trench. 

"Let's get up out of here and go to meet them," 
Jock Hanna and Lewis suggested. "If we attack them, 
we'll mighty soon start them running the other way." 

With these two were Doothy and Sandy Dowling 
all urging me to lead them in an attack upon Fritz. 
But the chances didn't look good enough to warrant 
so desperate an expedient at that time and I refused 
the permission. 

Meantime Fritz was pressing in closer and closer, 
harder and harder. At last he was directly in front of 
us so that when I would throw a bomb I could see 
an opening in the mob where it exploded. But that 
opening was promptly filled up and Fritz kept coming 
on. Behind me Archie West was pulling the pins from 
the bombs and handing them to me to throw. Had 
we dropped one while passing, both of us would have 
been blown to glory in a second. Usually the thrower 
pulls the pins just before he throws. Until the pins 
are pulled the bombs are harmless. 

As Fritz crowded in, word came down the line: 



COWARDS 149 

"Retire." We were pressed so hard, and the order 
seemed at first so reasonable that I was on the point 
of running. I saw the Staffords going and many of 
our own men. Then it came to me : "There's no such 
word or command in the British army regulations as 
'Retire.' Had the command been properly given it 
would have been 'Fall back,' This is a German trick." 

Quickl}'- I called to all the men I could make hear : 
"Stand fast. This is a German trick," The word 
was passed along and our men returned to their places 
and fought back with renewed determination. We 
had lost precious seconds during the confusion, how- 
ever, and some of our men were beyond recall, but in 
our anger we drove Fritz back and restored our posi- 
tion. 

Then we began to count the cost. Doothy, Bowl- 
ing, Lewis and Hanna were missing. In the morning 
they returned and reported the reason for their ab- 
sence. They had heard the order "Retire," in the ex- 
citement had forgotten there is no such command and 
seeing others going they went, too. They had gone 
on back to the reserve trench and hadn't known they 
were in wrong until in the morning some stretcher- 
bearers told them we were still in the front line. Then 
they hastened back and reported. 

But under the regulations they must be reported 
as having fled in the face of the enemy, without orders. 



I50 KILTIE McCOY 

Sergeant McKinnon and I were ordered to take them 
to company headquarters which was a deep dugout in 
the front Hne where shells were bursting every minute. 
Here the four men were officially charged with cow- 
ardice. I never felt so badly for any men in my li f e ; 
anguish was written in every line of their faces. Of 
course they denied the charges and when they \^'ere 
asked if they had any witnesses I stepped forward. 

"These men are not cowards, Captain," I said. 
"They didn't want to run. They were confused by 
the fake order that came over. I almost ran myself. 
Instead of being cowards, these four men asked me 
to lead them in a charge. They wanted to go forward 
to meet the enemy rather than back to gti av/ay from 
him. They are brave men and have been ever since 
they came out." 

The captain knew all four of the men personally 
and of course knew they were not cowards. He un- 
derstood the situation perfectly, but under the regu- 
lations they must go to battalion headquarters for 
their final trial. The captain did not deprive them 
of their arms nor confine them, but placed them in 
my charge and sent them back to the company until 
such time as they were ordered before the court at 
battalion headquarters. 

Lewis and Hanna fell the next day, as they stood 
on the fire step fighting like heroes, and a day or two 



COWARDS 151 

later Doothy and Dowling went back to battalion 
headquarters with me. There again I told my story 
of their action and the colonel promptly discharged 
them with words of the highest commendation : 

"I knew you were not cowards, boys," he said. 
*'I have known you personally too long to believe that 
of you. I regret that under the regulations it was 
necessary to prefer the charges against you, but that 
has to be done for the safety of the army. However, 
you are not only discharged but you are also com- 
mended for bravery. Just remember hereafter, 
though, that there is no such word as 'Retire' in the 
British army regulations. The Germans have many 
times used this trick, sometimes with some success. 
Don't let them catch you again. My great regret is 
that I could not have made this statement to those 
other two brave lads before their time came." 

That was the only trial for cowardice I ever saw 
in the army. There are no cowards. Some cover 
their fears better than others. That is all. 



XIII 

IN NO MAN^S LAND 

I WAS feeling pretty cocky. I had been noticed by 
my (Captain. We had been out about three months 
when he ordered me to report to company headquar- 
ters. I must be of some account in the British army, 
after all. 

I went to the headquarters dugout the envy of 
all eyes. Here I found three others, Lieutenant 
Woods, a tali gawky youngster nineteen years old but 
a mighty fine boy and a brave officer ; Sergeant McClel- 
lan, and Private McDougal. 

"I want you four men to do some patrol duty 
to-night," said Captain Hay in a most informal man- 
ner. "Lieutenant Woods will command. Your du- 
ties will be to go out into No Man's Land, gather all 
the information you can, learn anything you may think 
might be of value to us and come back. Especially 
watch for any sign that the enemy is preparing for 
an attack. You are not to fight unless absolutely 
forced to it. Information in advance is of vastly more 
importance to us than a few dead Germans." 

That sounded good. It gave promise of being an 
152 



IN NO MAN'S LAND :i53 

experience with excitement in it. Therefore it was 
welcomed, for the dull life of the trenches became 
irksome after a little. 

"By the way," said Captain Hay, as we turned from 
him, "anything you would like tO' have sent home in 
case you do not return you should leave with your best 
pal." 

"In case we should not return." "Anything you 
would like to have sent home," "Leave it with your 
best pal." Those phrases didn't sound as if our expe- 
dition was to be exactly a picnic or a pink tea. How- 
ever, I turned over whatever valuables I had to Geordie 
Freeland and was ready to go whenever Woods or- 
dered. 

It was arranged that Woods and I should pair 
and go down to the right of the line while McClellan 
and McDougal should work up on the left. We ar- 
ranged a pass word and of course the whole section of 
the line over which we would operate was notified we 
were out in front so as not to fire on us. 

It was only about one hundred yards between the 
lines at this point, making the greatest caution neces- 
sary. Woods and I crawled down toward the right 
perhaps five hundred yards. Ahead of us we saw a 
number of tree stumps, remnants of a grove that had 
been shell shattered and torn. We were making our 
way toward these stumps and had almost reached them 



154 KILTIE McCOY 

when a German star shell went up. We froze in- 
stantly. Moving neither hand nor foot, we hugged 
the ground. 

As we lay there, there came distinctly to our ears 
certain guttural sounds. We strained our ears. A 
most remarkable phenomenon of nature was occurring. 
Those stumps just ahead of us were talking; talking 
German, too. 

Very carefully we crawled backward until we put 
a little distance between ourselves and those German 
speaking stumps, when we turned about and as rapidly 
as safety would permit worked our way back to our 
trench. There we reported what we had seen and 
heard. Fritz was about to try a surprise attack. We 
would be ready for him. 

Four more machine guns were hastily brought up 
and placed. Every man, silently called from the dug- 
out, took his place just below the fire step and was 
ready for the word. Even Captain Hay borrowed a 
rifle and mounted the fire step. I took the place of 
one of the sentries. We could not put up more than 
the customary number lest we should warn Fritz that 
we were ready. 

All was silent in the trench but our eyes were 
straining out in front to catch sight of those German 
tree stumps. Pretty soon I saw some of them close 
up to our wires. They would move a step, then stop 



IN NO MAN'S LAND 155 

and stand perfectly still for a minute or two. They 
were coming. We were ready. But our position 
reminded me somewhat of that famous command 
given at Bunker Hill: "Wait until you can see the 
whites of their eyes." The thought sent a little thrill 
through me. 

Slowly those stumps made their way through our 
wires. Behind me men were anxiously waiting, strain- 
ing at the leash, eager to mount the fire step and blaze 
away. But we waited. Those stumps were inside our 
wires. They gathered themselves for the rush. They 
were not more than fifteen feet from us as they 
crouched for their spring. 

Captain Hay fired. That was the signal. Instantly 
every one of our dinky little star shells went up light- 
ing the ground where the Germans stood. The men 
in the trenches leaped to the fire step and began to 
blaze away. The machine guns purred backward and 
forward — ^they were mowing a swath through those 
stumps. 

For an instant the attackers were surprised and 
stunned. Then without firing a shot or throwing a 
bomb, they turned and fled. But they were inside our 
wires. To gtt out in the darkness, panic-stricken as 
they were, was a difficult problem. We had fair tar- 
gets to shoot at as they became entangled in our wires, 
and we shot them down. Not one of them ever got 



156 KILTIE McCOY 

back to his lines. Next morning about one hundred 
dead Germans lay out in front of our parapet or hung 
limply in our wires. My first experience in patrolling 
had been exciting and most highly successful. 

From then on I did patrol duty nearly every night 
and at length became a patrol leader. The work grew 
to be a mere matter of routine and I became calloused 
to the dangers ordinarily involved. I went out so 
many times and came back unscathed that I began to 
believe I was immune. So I used to put on all sorts 
of side stunts in order to get a little more excitement 
out of the work. 

There are always a lot of fellows who want to 
go on patrol duty, as it relieves the monotony of trench 
life and always gives plenty of thrills to the new men 
so they would have something to talk about. 

Among this class of chaps was a regimental ser- 
geant-major whom I will call Freddie. His duties 
not only didn't require him to go into No Man's Land 
but quite the reverse. However, he was always beg- 
ging for a chance so one night we got permission for 
him to go along. Geordie Freeland, Sergeant Arthur 
Robb, Freddie and myself constituted the party. 

A light snow lay on the ground. We were strolling 
about when over near Fritz's wires we discovered a 
well defined path. I immediately determined that 
Fritz had had a work party out mending his wires. 



IN NO MAN'S LAND 157 

It was easy to follow the path and I could see that a 
little way from us it began to zigzag. Evidently that 
zigzag path was the way through the entanglements. 

The spirit of bedevilment caught me, and I deter- 
mined to give Freddie a real thrill if possible, some- 
thing he could talk about for a month. I got the party 
close around me and told them to follow very quietly, 
but that if it became necessary to get out in a hurry 
to be sure and follow that zigzag path until clear of the 
wires, or we would certainly get caught and there 
would be no saving us. 

Then I led off, crawling very carefully along that 
path with the others following. Behind me was Robb, 
then Freddie and last Freeland. We were among the 
wires now making our way with the greatest caution. 
We could hear Fritz in his trenches. Up above us we 
could occasionally see the heads of the sentries. We 
were getting nearer and nearer his parapet; could 
hear snatches of song, laughter and talking and always 
we could hear one German coughing. We guessed by 
the sound that he must be an old man. 

We were inside the wires. I worked along cau- 
tiously, getting closer and closer to the parapet. As 
long as we were quiet we were comparatively safe, for 
Fritz would look over us rather than down upon us, 
we were now so close up, 

T wiggled a bit nearer. I knew Freddie was trem- 



158 KILTIE McCOY 

bling and my only fear was that in his excitement he 
would do something to give us away. I was now so 
close to Fritz that he could hardly have seen me with- 
out climbing up on his sand-bags to look down. 

To my left I could hear Fritz laughing and talking. 
I could hear him coughing to my right. Immediately 
in front, I couldn't hear a sound. For some minutes 
I lay perfectly motionless listening. Nothing hap- 
pened in front of us, so I looked carefully and discov- 
ered a breech in the sand-bags. Apparently this part 
of the line had been under fire and I guessed that in 
this particular bay considerable damage had been done 
and the Germans had not repaired it and had probably 
left it unoccupied, temporarily at least. 

Cautiously I crawled close up to the sand-bags that 
were left, propped myself upon my hands, and raised 
my head until I could look over. Nothing there. I 
pulled myself forward a few inches, and looked into 
the trench both ways. It was deserted. I pulled for- 
ward some more until my whole head was over the 
parapet; still I could see nobody in the trench. Then 
I carefully dropped over into the trench. Robb fol- 
lowed immediately while Freeland and Freddie lay 
close up to the sand-bags waiting for us. 

My guess had been correct. The trench had been 
damaged by our fire and no effort had been made to 
repair it. A dugout had been caved in and some 



IN NO MAN'S LAND 159 

wires strung around the bottom to trip anybody who 
might get in there. There was considerable water in 
the bottom of the trench, too. Very quietly I began 
to search around for souvenirs to prove I had been 
in a German trench. I went into the caved-in dugout 
and inadvertently I stepped into the water with a loud 
splash. 

My heart stopped beating. Robb and I shrank 
back against the wall of the trench keeping as quiet as 
possible and not moving a muscle. Certainly Fritz 
must hear that splash. He would be on us in a minute. 
We held our breaths and listened. There was but 
one thing to do : sell our lives as dearly as possible. 

We heard the sound of approaching voices and 
gathered ourselves ready for a fight in the dark. In 
front of us was a short and narrow opening which 
connected the trench in which we were with the travel 
trench in the rear. It was along that travel trench the 
owners of those voices were coming. To get us they 
must enter through that narrow opening. We should 
have the advantage for a minute anyway. 

In a moment three figures appeared. One was ap- 
parently an officer, the other two were private sol- 
diers. They stopped where we could see them and for 
a moment conferred. I believe they had been attracted 
by the splash I made, but evidently decided the noise 
did not come from that deserted fire bay, and moved 



i6o KILTIE McCOY 

on. As they did so, the officer fired his star shell 
pistol and a star went sailing out over No Man's 
Land. Probably every sentry on the line was watch- 
ing with straining eyes, but it was right there in their 
own trenches that four much wanted men lay. For 
several minutes we remained still, but hearing nothing 
more of the patrol party we lost no time climbing out 
of that trench. 

Freeland and Freddie were waiting for us but 
Freeland had about given us up. Then we wiggled 
back down that zigzag path, out into No Man's Land 
and over to our own trenches. Freddie was about the 
cockiest youngster I ever saw when he got back and 
began at once to tell of his experiences. Had he not 
been right up against Fritz's parapet? And before 
the story was very old, he had also been in the trench. 
He was proud and happy as a father with his first 
pair of twins. 

We reported what we had found and it was decided 
that this wrecked trench would be a fine place to initi- 
ate a raid. The raid was organized and when fifty of 
us went out a few nights later we had no difficulty go- 
ing through the wires nor in getting into the trench. 
Then we began to do things. 

We grabbed one officer, one non-commissioned of- 
ficer of a machine gun outfit and four men including 
the fellow whose cough had annoyed me a few nights 



IN NO MAN'S LAND i6i 

before. We also killed a considerable number and 
destroyed a lot of dugouts. 

When we came to get out of the trench, however, 
things were different. We had not demolished Fritz's 
wires going in, for we wanted to make our start right 
from his own trenches. Getting out was difficult and 
before we got back to our* own lines we had lost seven- 
teen out of our* fifty men, which was altogether too 
expensive to be worth while. But the patrol work, 
getting into that trench with Fritz all around us, had 
been exciting and interesting. Patrol work always 
can be made exciting if you are not satisfied just to 
stroll around in No Man's Land. 



XIV 

WANTED — EXCITEMENT 

Dodging bullets, ducking* shells, patrolling and 
pulling off bombing raids may appear exciting to you, 
and it is in a me'asure, but it gets monotonous after a 
time so that out there on the western front we were 
always seeking diversions from what we called the 
routine of trench life. Perhaps it was pure devil- 
ment, perhaps it was the spirit of bravado, but what- 
ever it was, we were always on the lookout for a 
new brand of excitement. 

Lieutenant Woods, two other chaps and myself 
were on patrol one night. We had wiggled up to 
Fritz's wires and lay there listening for whatever 
we might be able to hear, when we suddenly deter- 
mined to see just how near we could come to shaking 
hands with Fritz without getting caught at it. 

Discovering a way through the wires. Woods and 
I wiggled in until we could see Fritz's head sticking up 
above the parapet. We had no definite idea what we 
were in there for but we knew that it might be serious 
business for us if Fritz should happen to see us. 

I was just thinking what asses we were when a 

102 



WANTED— EXCITEMENT 163 

hail came from the right. "We're caught," I said to 
myself, and waited for the expected bullet. But it 
didn't come. Instead, we began to hear the Germans 
up in front of us jabbering and a minute later we 
could hear them walking and talking as they made 
their way to our right in the direction from which 
had come the shout. 

I looked up toward the parapet and found that 
even the heads of the sentries had disappeared. We 
wondered what had happened. Soon all was quiet in 
the bay just in front of us but over to the right there 
was a perfect babel of voices mingled with shouts and 
laughter. 

We crawled along to the parapet and together we 
pulled ourselves up and looked over into the trench. 
Nobody home. But right under us stood a mail sack. 
It had just been opened — evidently abandoned when 
the shout came and a few parcels lay on the ground. 
Woods and I grabbed for it, pulled it up out of the 
trench and began to hurry back. 

We got through Fritz's wires with our prize all 
right and were legging it for our own trenches when 
we heard an angry yell behind us, followed by much 
jabbering in German and a shot. Fritz had discov- 
ered the theft of his mail and to show his displeasure 
promptly opened up a heavy fire on our trenches. We 
got back safely, but Fritz turned loose everything he 



1641 KILTIE McCOY 

had and gave us a fine strafing, while the men in our 
trenches gave us a fine cussing for what we had 
brought down upon them. 

But it was worth it. That mail sack was filled 
with letters and parcels. The letters — afterward pub- 
lished to show conditions in Germany — we turned over 
to the Intelligence Department, but the parcels we 
opened. Here were all sorts of things that the folks 
back in Germany had sent to their friends in the 
trenches. Some of the parcels addressed to officers 
contained nice warm clothing and good things to eat. 
There were cigars, cigarettes, sausages, black bread, 
candy and I don't know what not. The parcels for 
the private soldiers did not prove a rich haul, which 
showed to our minds that it is not the officer class 
back in Germany that is suffering, that their families 
were living well and could still send comforts to their 
men, but the families of the poor devils who were 
whipped into battle were the ones who were really 
suffering. 

For a long time there Had been great rivalry 
among our men over watches lifted from the Ger- 
mans. It is an unwritten law of the trenches that no 
watch or other trinket should be taken from the dead. 
The victim must at least be alive and preferably a 
prisoner. One member of our company had flitched 
a watch which must have cost a lot of money, with a 



WANTED— EXCITEMENT 165 

stop-watch attachment and all kinds of little dials 
showing the year, month, day, hour, minute and sec- 
ond; and it also struck the hours. 

I had been kidded to death because I had never 
got a watch. All I had ever taken was a German rifle 
that I had to keep supplied with German ammunition. 
They were always asking me, "Why don't you go out 
and get yourself a watch ?" One night I did and I still 
have it. 

It was only a couple of days after the incident of 
the mail sack that I was tolled off for a bombing raid. 
When I went out I determined if there was a watch 
in the German army I was going to have it. 

We were in the trenches working fast. An un- 
armed German was standing in front of me. He had 
surrendered. I saw a watch chain hanging from his 
coat. The chain apparently was a heavy one so I 
figured the watch was probably a good one. 

"Give me that watch," I yelled at him. 

Right beside him leaning against the trench side 
was the rifle and bayonet of one of our men who had 
fallen. In answer to my command, the German 
reached for that rifle. He grabbed it quickly and 
was in the act of getting into position to use it when 
I drove forward with my bayonet. As he was falling 
I grabbed that chain and with a jerk soon had chain, 
watch and half his coat in my hand. I thrust them 



i66 KILTIE McCOY 

into my pocket without looking at them and went 
about my business. 

When we had got back in our own trenches I col- 
lected the gang around me and proudly produced my 
watch. That timepiece was just as good as any dollar 
Ingersoll you ever saw. I've never heard the end of 
it, and was kidded from Switzerland to the Channel. 
Every time we went on a raid after that one after 
another would ask me very kindly if I didn't want to 
leave my watch and other valuables before I got killed. 
But I still have the watch, such as it is, and the devil's 
got its former owner. 

The Germans never did like the Scotch, and never 
did they lose an opportunity to abuse them by word 
of mouth or physically if they got hold of them. In 
the first place they were afraid of the Scotch, for when 
your Scotchman goes into battle he has on his face a 
look of determination with a capital "D." He goes at 
his man looking him steadily in the eye and when he 
lunges he lets loose a wild yell that carries terror 
with it. The boche particularly disliked those of us 
who wore kilts and gave us a name too obscene to 
repeat. 

One day after we had abandoned the kilts and 
donned the pants, we saw something white sticking 
up over Fritz's trenches. It was so far away we 
couldn't make out what it was, but we were all curi- 



WANTED— EXCITEMENT 167 

oslty over it. One of our officers through his field 
glasses made out it was a sign on which was printed 
in perfectly good English : 

"You Scotch , Where are your kilts?" 

That set us all boiling, and we determined we 
would get that sign or bust. Several of us organized 
a party to go after it. Well along in the night we 
wiggled across No Man's Land, in through Fritz's 
wires, and at length were up to the sign. I reached 
for it and got it, but its disappearance was discovered 
mighty suddenly, and Fritz opened up on us. We got 
back with the sign but we lost four good men doing 
it, a pretty heavy toll for a piece of foolishness. The 
next morning we got our reward when we stuck it up 
above our trenches, and Fritz showed his anger by 
pounding our lines all day long. 

We were always particularly anxious to get at 
the Prussians, for they are the meanest lot of men in 
the world; responsible for the war and most of the 
atrocities, they are treacherous always and never to 
be trusted under any circumstances. The Saxons 
usually are not so bad and we didn't have quite the 
same hatred for them that we had for the Prussians. 

We had reason to believe that Prussians were op- 
posing us at one time, so we did everything we could 
think of to make life miserable for them. Our artil- 
lery pounded them, our machine guns swept their 



i68 KILTIE McCOY 

trenches, we pecked at them with our rifles and we 
sought by every means to make them uncomfortable. 
One day we saw a sign above their trenches which 
read: 

"Scotchmen, why are you so mad when peace is 
so near?" 

Then we discovered they were Saxons who were 
opposing us and we took it a httle easier. We tried 
to get that sign but never could quite reach it. 

There are times when silence is more than golden 
and when if you happen to lose your head for just an 
instant the result may be disastrous. Big crazy Gil- 
len of our company lost his and it cost us six men. 

We were in a work party repairing the wires out 
in front of our trenches. Usually this is not a partic- 
ularly dangerous job, indeed it sometimes happens that 
both sides will have parties out working on their 
w^ires and by common consent neither fires on the 
other. Sometimes, however, it is different and the 
time Gillen lost his head for a moment, let his anger 
get the better of him, was one of these times. 

We were working quietly in our wires with a cover 
party out in front to keep off any German patrol that 
might drift our way. The sentries in our trenches had 
been notified of our presence so they wouldn't fire on 
us. The time came for the sentries to change and the 
ione who was relieved directly opposite where we were 



WANTED— EXCITEMENT 169 

working failed to notify his relief that we were out 
there. Hardly had the new man taken his place when 
he heard us and promptly fired. He hit nobody but 
he made Gillen mad. 

"You silly ass," yelled Gillen, "who are you shoot- 
ing at? It's us. We're fixing wires." 

Of course the whole German line heard him and 
promptly opened fire. We scrambled for the trenches 
but six of our men were caught before they got there. 

Wires are bad business to get mixed up in, anyway. 
Once we had been on a bombing raid led by Major 
Clark. In getting back, Clark got caught in Fritz's 
wires and, with a half dozen other men, was killed. 
On him were valuable papers which our officers didn't 
want to fall into German hands. Immediately a re- 
ward of two hundred francs was offered to the man 
who would bring in the body. Every night man 
after man tried to win that reward, but Fritz knew 
what he was about and trained his machine guns on 
the major's body and the bodies of those others who 
had been caught with him. Of course Fritz had an 
absolutely accurate range and couldn't miss. The re- 
sult was that many a man lost his life trying to get 
those two hundred francs. 

I went out four times after them and every time 
escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Once I wiggled 
up so close to the major's body I could touch it. Then 



lyo KILTIE McCOY 

a bullet plunked into it and warned me that I had no 
chance. But we determined Fritz should not get it 
either and so we had gims trained on it, too. The 
result was, of course, that that body was soon rid- 
dled with bullets and the papers were so mangled that 
they would have been useless to anybody. I was back 
there two months later and what was left of the body 
still hung in the wires. At length nature did its work 
and the body fell to the ground to become a part of it. 

Many of our attempts to find excitement had a 
purpose ; and sometimes we did tricks merely to try out 
some new method of mussing up Fritz and his 
trenches. 

I was called back to company headquarters one day 
and from there was passed along to brigade head- 
quarters. Here I met some other men and one officer 
from the Royal Engineers. We were informed that 
an engineer had devised a new scheme for demolish- 
ing Fritz's wires, that we were to try it out some night 
and would have a few days of practise. 

The scheme was to fill a three-inch drain pipe 
eighteen feet long with our highest explosive, work it 
in under Fritz's wires and then touch it off by means 
of a battery, following close with a raiding party. It 
was figured this would be an improvement over artil- 
lery preparation since when we tore up wires with 
artillery, Fritz always knew something was going to 



WANTED— EXCITEMENT 1 7 1 

happen. If this pipe could be placed under the wires 
without Fritz's knowledge and the raiding party fol- 
lowed close upon the explosion, the element of sur- 
prise would be assured. 

For several days we worked with that big piece of 
pipe. We tried all sorts of methods of advancing it, 
for manifestly we could not just pick it up, carry it 
over there and lay it down where we wanted it. We 
must work it across No Man's Land a foot at a time, 
shove it under the wires an inch at a time and without 
any noise of scraping, either on the ground or on the 
wires. 

At last we were ready to try the scheme out. It 
was so heavy it took as many men as could get hold 
of it to move it along. We worked our way across 
No Man's Land and began shoving it under the wires. 
I was on the front end and would lift and guide, while 
the rest shoved forward. Our machine guns kept 
rattling to drown any scraping it might make as the 
pipe touched the wires or hit the posts. We would 
shove it ahead an inch or two when it would strike 
something and stick. Then we would work it around 
a little and shove it ahead another few inches. It was 
the hardest work I ever did in or out of the army. 

After a time the thing was almost in place when 
again it stuck. I was lifting and working on it when 
suddenly the blamed thing slipped forward, and up 



172 KILTIE McCOY 

against the barbed wires I came full tilt. Barbs 
entered my face and hands and the blood flowed from 
every wound. It took all the will power at my com- 
mand to keep from yelling or cursing or doing some- 
thing that would have given us away to Fritz. 

Finally we had the thing where it belonged and 
scuttled back to our trenches, reaching them just a 
half -minute before the time set to touch the button to 
explode the pipe, and for the artillery to open up. The 
Suffolks were to make the raid and were out there 
ready to go forward immediately the thing blew. 

An officer back in the trenches touched the button. 
Fritz's wires, with an awful roar, were blown all over 
France and the cleanest space I ever saw was opened 
for the advance of the raiding party. The Germans 
were thoroughly surprised and the raiders had a great 
chance at them, but we were always kind of sore about 
it, for we figured the Suffolks didn't do as well con- 
sidering the opportunities as we would have done and 
we called their raid a failure and told them what we 
would have accomplished had we made it. Soldiers 
are much like spoiled children. 



XV 



I HAVE FIVE SISTERS 

Every day I am asked: "Hasn't your experience 
in France brutalized you? Hasn't it made you hold 
human life cheaply? How can you say you enjoyed 
sticking your bayonet through a German ?" I have but 
one answer to all these questions. That answer is: 
**I have five sisters." 

I had five sisters at home while I was over there. 
I knew the mothers and the sisters and daughters 
of many soldiers, comrades of mine. I knew the story 
of one little Flemish girl, for she told it to me herself. 
Whenever I went into action, whenever I saw in front 
of me a Hun, I remembered that little Flemish girl 
and my five sisters at home. Then with a yell of anger, 
I lunged forward with my bayonet and Fll confess I 
loved to feel the steel passing through German flesh 
and bone, and I laughed as I saw the Hun fall, squeal- 
ing like a stuck pig, no longer a menace to my five 
sisters, and that little Flemish girl once more avenged. 

For a long time the Royal Scots were near Armen- 
tieres, our billets being located at Erquingham. Here 
was a little estaminet in which lived an old man and 

173 



174 KILTIE McCOY 

an old woman with two young women, Lula and Anna 
and their two children. Both these young women had 
lost their husbands at Verdun. Lula had once been 
in the hands of the Germans for a short time, and 
while she didn't tell me, I'm sure her little square- 
headed baby had a German for a father. 

At this estaminet we used to buy our eggs and 
milk and chips. The people were Flemish and because 
I could talk Dutch with them I soon gained their close 
friendship. One day not a great while before I was 
wounded and put out of the fighting business, a girl 
came to the estaminet. She was the niece of the old 
folks. She spoke only Dutch so I was able to make 
friends with her and to learn from her at first-hand, 
the story I can never forget, the story that made me 
laugh whenever I stuck my bayonet through a Hun. 

I'll call the little girl Louise for the purpose of this 
story, for there are thousands of Louises in France 
and Belgium, to whom the same story might well 
apply. 

Louise had been visiting relatives in Lille when the 
war broke out, and she was there still when the Ger- 
mans came in 19 14. She had not hurried away at 
their approach because she believed, as did all the 
rest of the world, that non-combatants and especially 
women and children and the aged, would be respected 
and well cared for. She did not know what the world 



I HAVE FIVE SISTERS 175 

knows now, that the Hun wars upon women and chil- 
dren, the sick and the aged, the helpless and the inno- 
cent in even more brutal fashion than he does upon the 
armed men in uniform. 

Hardly had the Germans arrived when she dis- 
covered her mistake but it was then too late. Once 
they were settled in the city, all the women and young 
girls were marshaled together. Several hundred of 
the younger ones were picked out and marched away 
to the chateau in which the commanding general had 
established his headquarters. Louise was then but 
seventeen years old and the most beautiful of all those 
young girls who were paraded before the general. 

Like a fancier looking over his prize stock, the 
general looked over this array of young girls. His 
eyes fell upon the beautiful little Louise. 

"You," he said, and pointed toward her. 

Frightened half to death and not knowing what 
she was supposed to do, the girl stood fast. Two sol- 
diers seized her and jerking her out of the line, half 
dragged her into the chateau. The general continued 
looking over his prize winners. Some fifteen or twen- 
ty more of the most beautiful were selected and sent 
into the chateau and assembled in one large room. 
No longer were they free women. Now they were 
the slaves and the playthings of the general command- 
ing a great army supposed to be made up of civilized 



176 KILTIE McCOY 

men, and representing a civilized and highly cultured 
nation. 

"It was not long after we had thus been assem- 
bled," she told me in Dutch, "that the general entered 
and took me away with him. I fought him with all 
my strength. I wept and pleaded with him. He 
laughed at me and struck me. I fought on and 
scratched him. With a yell of rage he called for sol- 
diers. Two entered. They held me. Never again 
will I be able to look my mother in the face. No 
longer am I the girl she had taught me to be. 

"The other girls suffered the same fate. We all 
wept and pleaded, but in vain. The general used to 
laugh at us and say : *What are you squalling about ? 
We're going to treat every woman in Belgium and 
France the same way. We're going to treat the queen 
of Belgium that way when we get her and we're going 
to make the king stand by and watch us,' 

"They dressed us in the finest of clothing. Beau- 
tiful silks were brought and some of the old women 
were forced to make dresses for us. One poor woman 
was compelled to make a silk dress for her own daugh- 
ter, and the general laughed at the joke and struck her 
when she wept. Beautiful as those dresses were there 
was little to them, just enough to cover our nakedness, 
no more. 

"We were forced to do all the general's work. We 



I HAVE FIVE SISTERS 177 

must serve him at table and that came frequently, for 
he was an awful glutton and gorged himself many- 
times a day with half raw meat and wine. 

"His favorite amusement while eating was to 
throw meat bones at us, scraps of food into our faces, 
strike us with his hands upon our half exposed persons 
and occasionally to beat us over our bare shoulders 
with his belt. If we happened to be in his way he 
kicked us, and always we were subject to his demands 
of passion. 

"Whenever an officer of high command visited the 
general, that visit was the signal for a wild orgy in 
the chateau. They would sit at the table and eat and 
drink all night long and these were nights of the great- 
est terror for us. We were always dressed in our 
best and most costly clothing, and were subjected to 
every possible Indignity that they, in their drunken 
frenzy, could devise. They pelted us with their food, 
they threw wine bottles at us, they kicked us and 
struck us and fought among themselves for possession 
of us. Not once but many times would we be sub- 
jected to them and the next day we would be kicked 
and cuffed because we were not so pretty nor so lively 
as usual." 

For four months this little seventeen-year-old girl 
was kept in this general's harem, for that was all it 
w^as. In that time the brutalities and excesses had 



1,78 KILTIE McCOY 

begun to show upon her. Her beauty faded some- 
what, she was no longer in favor with the general, 
he must have a new victim. Louise was turned over 
to the officers' mess for them to do with as they liked. 
Here, instead of one master, she had a hundred or 
more. Each misused her according to his own taste 
in blows, kicks and indignities of all sorts and kinds. 
And then one day there came into the world a little 
boy. Louise was his mother but his father may have 
been any one of many German beasts. 

No longer did the officers want the little Flemish 
girl. She was a woman now, a mother. And so slie 
was sent to the non-commissioned officers' mess. Here 
the number of her masters was increased and here she 
was treated even worse than a slave. Clothed in rags, 
misused, befouled, abused in every way a beast could 
imagine, she was made to work for them, to clean 
their boots while they cuffed her and spat upon her as 
she worked. Great patches of her hair were torn out 
by the roots. I saw scars half as big as the palm of 
your hand, where the hair had been torn off. I saw 
the great welts on her back where they had beaten her 
with their belts and canes. 

Then the non-commissioned officers tired of her. 
She was no longer beautiful; she looked like an old 
woman, so she was sent away to the women's camp 
to be at the service of the men. This camp, she told 



I HAVE FIVE SISTERS 179 

me, was a great enclosure around which was a heavy 
barbed wire fence and within which were many has- 
tily and ill constructed huts. When a soldier was 
given a day's leave, he was also given a ticket, if he 
were himself free from disease, that admitted him to 
the women's camp where he took whatever woman he 
wanted to do with as he liked. No tainted man was 
permitted to enter the camp, he must seek his prey 
among those who were still at liberty and he must 
mutilate her as a warning to other soldiers that she 
was tainted. 

All during this time, Louise had had her baby with 
her. Bom under loathsome conditions though he was, 
the mother love could not be killed. But as she nursed 
him every drop of the nourishment carried with it the 
germ of hate for his father, and his father was the Ger- 
man nation. As she sung the little one to sleep, her 
lullaby was an admonition to grow up to hate the 
boche, to despise him, to kill him, to avenge his 
mother. 

But now the little one was taken from her. Where 
it was sent she will never know except that it was sent 
to Germany to be reared and taught more of the 
kultur that had resulted in his birth. 

The time came, and the opportunity, when Louise 
escaped. Her rags barely covering her nakedness, 
looking at least fifty years old, her once black hair 



Il8o KILTIE McCOY 

now streaked with gray, scarred and sick and once 
more about to become a mother, she managed, by what 
means she never told me, to make her way back to the 
British Hnes. It was after this, of course, that I saw 
her. Poor httle girl! She died — a blessed relief — 
giving birth to this second child born of the Hun. 

All over northern France this same story is being 
repeated by hundreds of girls who shared a similar 
fate. Thousands more will have it to tell when once 
they are liberated from the hands of the barbarians. 
Everywhere little children are growing up to hate all 
that is German. Everywhere are mothers singing 
songs of hate into the ears of their little ones. Every- 
where you see French and Flemish mothers with their 
babies on their knees teaching them over and over 
again : 

" Anglais f Bon. Ecossais? Bon, Americcdnef Bon. 
Bochef Ne Bon.'' 

And when these mothers say "Boche" hate glit- 
ters in their eyes. 

A favorite form of showing off their youngsters 
to the foreign soldiers is for the mother to stand the 
little one in front of her, then holding up her finger, 
she asks the child the questions which he has persis- 
tently been taught to answer. Softly and sweetly he 
replies "bon" when the mother suggests "English, 
Scotch, American" and all of those fighting the Ger- 



I HAVE FIVE SISTERS i8i 

man, but when her eye flames and her lips explode 
the hated word "Boche" the little one's eyes flash, too, 
and he responds, in French, "No Good." 

Everywhere you may see and hear it, this ripen- 
ing of the seed of hate, the seed that will never die, 
perhaps the seed of a future war. 

Yes, I loved to feel the steel enter the body of the 
Hun. Brutalized? Perhaps I have been. Hold 
human life cheaply? Yes, if that Hfe is that of the 
Hurt. 

I remember little Louise. I have five sisters. 
That's my answer. 



XVI 



ALL IS FAIR IN WAR 



"All is fair in war." 

It's an old saying and the Huns apparently believe 
it, believe it so thoroughly, that it is always their alibi 
whenever they commit some crime or some act of 
treachery beneath the thought, even, of a civilized 
human being. 

During my time* on the western front I saw many 
instances of this treachery, I knew of many cases of 
barbarity and many, many occasions in which the Ger- 
man excused his act and sought to save his miserable 
life by pleading pitifully : "All is fair in war." 

Of course that phrase is two edged. If all is fair 
for the Hun, the same holds true for his enemy. More 
than once I answered the Hun's plea for his life on 
the ground that "all is fair in war" with the state- 
ment: "Yes, you're right. This for you," and then 
I drove my bayonet through him and didn't feel I had 
done anything unmanly or unsportsmanlike either. 

In our battalion we once had a lieutenant named 
Davidson. He was a most lovable man, brave and big- 

182 



ALL IS FAIR IN WAR 183 

hearted, even though somewhat effeminate in manner 
and speech. We called him "The Painter" and we 
were all always ready to fight for him to the death. 

We had been in a pretty bitter scrap. The dead 
and wounded were thick around us. In a little shell- 
hole immediately in front of our position lay a wound- 
ed German lieutenant and several dead boches. The 
German was suffering intensely; writhing around and 
screaming every now and then in his agony. This was 
more than "The Painter" could stand. At risk of his 
life he left our cover and went out into the shell-hole 
to aid his wounded enemy. As tenderly as if the Hun 
had. been his own boy, "The Painter" lifted the man's 
head and gave him a drink from his canteen. 

"The stretcher-bearers will be here in a minute and 
we'll take the best of care of you," he said. "I'll try 
to hurry them." 

Close by lay a Scotch soldier. "The Painter" 
went over to see if he was alive. As he stooped over 
the body, the German lieutenant, without a word of 
warning, jerked his revolver from under him and shot 
"The Painter" in the back. 

I had been watching the whole thing, for I was 
fearful of just such an act. I had seen enough of the 
Hun to know better than to trust him. When "The 
Painter" fell I saw red at once. For an instant I was 
a wild man, just as barbarous as the Hun. Taking no 



i84 KILTIE McCOY 

thought for myself I ran to that shell-crater. Murder 
— if you want to call it that — was in my heart. The 
Hun saw me coming and knew my purpose. As I 
approached him he began to wail and whine and plead 
for his life. ''Don't kill me," he begged like a baby in 
perfectly good English. "All is fair in war." 

"What's fair for one is fair for the other," I yelled 
at him, and without hesitation, without a feeling of 
compunction, I plunged my bayonet through him. 

On another occasion a wounded German lay out 
in No Man's Land. He was suffering all the torments 
that pain and thirst could bring him. One of our 
stretcher-bearers couldn't stand the sight of his writh- 
ings, could think of him only as a man in torment. 
With his broad white stripe and red cross on his arm 
and the further precaution of a white flag in his hand, 
this stretcher-bearer went out to the wounded Hun; 
out in the open, in the broad daylight he walked 
straight toward the suffering German. 

Not a shot was fired. At last, we thought, the 
Hun is showing some signs of humanity. 

The stretcher-bearer reached the side of the 
wounded man and kneeling, raised his head and held 
a canteen to his lips. Even as he did so a rifle cracked 
over in Fritz's trenches, and a ball sped true to its 
mark. The stretcher-bearer, at the very moment of 
performing an act of mercy for a wounded enemy. 



ALL IS FAIR IN WAR 185 

fell dead across that enemy's body, the victim of Hun 
treachery and Hun kultur. 

Just once in my nearly three years on the western 
front did I know a German to show any mercy to one 
of our men. Once, and once only, a German officer 
gave evidence of a heart and he is the one man in the 
kaiser's army I should like to meet and shake hands 
with to-day. 

We had been on a raid. One of our men had 
fallen outside the German parapet. When daylight 
came we could plainly see him there tossing about in 
his anguish. As we watched him we debated among 
ourselves if we would not be doing an act of kindness 
to shoot the poor fellow. For a long time we watched 
him, knowing full well the Germans were also watch- 
ing him and probably enjoying the sight of his suffer- 
ing. 

All at once a German officer rose up from his 
trench, climbed over the parapet in full view of us, an 
easy mark had we chosen to fire upon him, walked 
straight to where the Scotchman lay, stooped down 
and gave the lad a drink. Then very tenderly he 
picked him up in his arms and took him over into the 
German trenches. Whatever became of the boy I do 
not know, but I am certain that so long as he was in 
the care of that officer he was cared for and well 
treated. 



i86 KILTIE McCOY 

Our whole line sent up a great cheer for the Ger- 
man and we threw notes over thanking him for his 
brave and kindly act. 

There are times when the opposing armies arrive 
at more or less friendly understandings. This is 
especially true in trench warfare and during those 
seasons when things are comparatively quiet. I 
remember we were opposite a Saxon unit — and as I 
have said, we were more inclined to trust the Saxon 
than the Prussians — at a time when things were 
inactive along the front and we got into the habit of 
trading back and forth. The Germans had little meat 
so once in a while we'd toss, over to them a much 
prized can of bully beef, and in return they'd toss 
back black bread, cigars, cigarettes or whatever else 
they thought we would appreciate. 

This bartering went on for some time until one 
day a can was tossed into our trench and we all 
rushed for it. The first man to reach it was just stoop- 
ing over to pick it up when it exploded blowing the 
man to pieces. The Hun was up to his old tricl^. We 
got even with him for his treachery and made him 
pay in dozens of men for the one of ours he murdered. 

We were on a raid one night. An officer, with 
Sergeant Hill and a private, was working his way; 
through the German trenches. We had beaten up the 
boche pretty badly and they were surrendering in 



ALL IS FAIR IN WAR 187 

squads. These three reached a traverse and the officer 
ordered bombs dropped over into the next bay to. 
make sure all was safe there. Before the bombs were 
tossed, however, the cry of "Kamerad. Kamerad. 
We surrender" came from the Huns in perfectly good 
English. 

Hill and the private passed around the corner into 
the bay. As soon as they appeared the Huns opened 
fire and Hill was killed. The officer was raging. 
Gathering some men, I happened to be one of them, 
he took the lead and rushed around at their head. 
We soon discovered four Germans standing with 
their hands up and yelling : "Kamerad." 

"I'll 'Kamerad' you," yelled the officer. "You've 
killed my sergeant." 

"All is fair in war," they wailed. 

"If it is," said the officer, "so is this," and with 
that statement, preventing any of us from interfering 
or taking any part, he drew his revolver and with his 
own hand shot each of the four men. Call it murder, 
or whatever you like, but the lives of four Germans is 
mighty cheap payment for the life of one civilized 
man like Hill. 

In passing over ground from which the Germans 
have retreated it is never safe to touch anything. The 
most innocent and unexpected object is likely to be 
loaded with high explosive just waiting for somebody 



1 88 KILTIE McCOY 

to pick it up. They even load dead bodies so that 
when the stretcher-bearers attempt to remove them 
to give them a decent burial, they are blown to pieces. 

I nearly got mine in such an experience. Indeed, 
I would have, had not a friend, who was with me, 
warned me. We were crossing ground the enemy 
had just been driven out of and were going toward 
our new trenches when I saw a fine German helmet a 
few paces ahead of me. 

"Just what I want for a souvenir to send home," 
I said, and started to pick it up. 

"Don't be a silly ass," said the chap with me. "It's 
probably loaded. Take a shot at it first to be on the 
safe side." 

It went up in a million pieces and made a terrific 
noise. Had I touched it I should have been blown up 
with it. 

In the little town of Castel, not far from Albert, 
is a cemetery the story of which is known to every sol- 
dier who ever fought in that vicinity. Before the war 
there was a big monastery in the town. In it were 
some two hundred priests and nuns. I heard the story 
from the old Mother Superior, who was then the sole 
survivor. 

They had not fled when the Germans came. That 
the Hun would respect religious property and the 
priests and nuns nobody doubted. They found out 



ALL IS FAIR IN WAR 189 

too late their mistake, just as the world has discovered 
its mistake. Every one of the priests was murdered. 
Every one of those nuns was outraged and killed. 
Out there in the little graveyard lie their remains, 
silent witnesses to German kultur. 

One grave there is in that yard which is not of 
murdered priest or outraged nun. It is the grave of 
a German officer, said to be the nephew of the kaiser. 
One of the nuns before being overpowered, killed 
this officer and they buried his foul body along with 
those of his victims. 

When we took Festubert, I was one of the squad 
which went about seeking out hidden nests of Ger- 
mans, locating the wounded and the dying. It was 
our duty to search every house from roof to cellar, 
every hole and place of possible concealment. 

In one basement we found several little boys, still 
alive but so mutilated that they can never be men, 
never be fathers with children of their own. Dozens 
of little girls from twelve to fourteen years of age we 
found dead and outraged. We found old women with 
their scalps literally torn off and one mutilated in this 
and other ways unspeakable, and with a bayonet 
thrust through her, the bayonet still pinning her body 
when we found her. 

We found old men, too old to do harm to anybody, 
with their heads crushed in by rifle butts. Everywhere 



190 KILTIE McCOY 

were evidences of wanton cruelty and outrage until 
many a man vowed never again to talve a German 
prisoner. 

See what I have seen, and I saw all this and worse, 
and you'll agree with me that the only good German, 
is the German who has become fertilizer for the soil, 
who can never rear more of his kind. 

How the Huns go about the business of making 
war and at the same time maintaining their man- 
power was shown by a letter taken from a German 
prisoner and read to us not long before I was wounded 
and left the front. The letter was written by a mu- 
nitions worker in Berlin. I remember his first name 
was Hans and the letter was addressed to his brodier, 
who was fighting on the western front. We took the 
letter from him when he was captured. Hans 
informed his brother that he has been assigned a cer- 
tain district in Berlin and that he was to visit every 
unmarried girl sixteen years old and upward in that 
territory. The government was to give legitimate 
names to the children and to provide certain compen- 
sation for their care. Efficency can not go further. 



XVII 

THE MAN IN COMMAND 

Lieutenant Bogey was out for revenge. Three 
brothers of his had the Huns killed and the lieutenant 
wanted vengeance. 

Bogey was a big fellow standing six feet two 
inches in his stockings and built proportionately. He 
joined our battalion in 191 6 just in time to get in on 
the big push. Immediately he won the heart of every 
man in the battalion. From the day he joined us he 
showed all the attributes of an officer, the kind of 
officer the men gladly die for. He was utterly careless 
of his own life or his own comfort, but he was most 
thoughtful and most careful of the lives and comfort 
of his men. 

He had been with us only about a month when 
our whole battalion with some other units went over 
in a big smash. Bogey was then commanding the 
platoon in which I was. Our platoon and the one 
next on our left were held up in No Man's Land by a 
lone machine gun. The other sections of the line 
went forward without great difficulty. That gun 
was carefully placed and had command of our front 

191 



192 KILTIE McCOY 

in such manner that it was utterly impossible for us 
to advance. It was spitting so fast that all we could 
do was to hug the ground while the bullets swept over 
us. Even then many of our men got it, just because 
they didn't hapi^en to be quite thin enough. 

Our delay was serious to the success of the whole 
attack. It left a gap between our two platoons and 
those on our right and left. If these others continued 
to advance while we were held up, their flanks would 
be open to an enfilading fire and perhaps give oppor- 
tunity for Fritz to get in behind them. Our delay 
therefore was mussing up the whole attack, yet we 
couldn't advance in the face of that machine gun. 

Lieutenant Bogey was not the kind of man to stand 
for that situation long. He knew what our delay 
was doing to the plan of the attack. It was with a 
thrill of horror yet admiration that I saw him leap 
suddenly to his feet in full view of the crew of that 
machine gun, a fair and open mark for that instru- 
ment of death. He was a magnificent sight as he 
stood there though. His more than six feet rose 
up like a giant. In his right hand he held a bomb 
and in his left a rifle. For just an instant he poised 
himself. Then he threw the bomb at the machine 
gun. He missed. But no sooner had that bomb left 
his right hand than he started forward directly in 
the face of that gun. All alone this brave young 




Convalescing 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 193 

giant was charging with his lone rifle and bayonet a 
machine gun which could spit six hundred shots a min- 
ute and couldn't miss him except by a miracle. He had 
no more than one hundred feet to go, but he hadn't a 
chance. He fell and I'll venture the assertion that not 
less than fifty bullets from that machine gun found 
a resting place In his body. 

But Bogey's sacrifice had given us the chance. 
In that instant when he held the attention of the crew 
of that machine gun, we leaped to our feet and went 
at them. They had no chance to turn their infernal 
machine on us. We took no prisoners. We avenged 
the death of as brave and as popular an officer as ever 
I knew. He need not have taken that chance. All 
he had to do was to order us forward and we would 
have gone gladly and happily into the jaws of death. 
But it was like Bogey. He did himself what he 
would neither order nor ask any or all of us to do. 
He died doing it and his people were sent the Dis- 
tinguished Service Medal for his act. 

Bogey was typical of the British army officer. A 
braver or a more democratic lot of men I never saw. 
When we first joined up, the officers were, we thought, 
inclined to be snobbish. We later found out, how- 
ever, that their attitude was merely a part of the rigid 
discipline of the British army and that discipline made 
good soldiers of us. 



194 KILTIE McCOY 

Early in the war the British officers were prac- 
tically all rich young noblemen, who bought their 
commissions in accordance with the centuries old cus- 
tom of the British army. The pay of officers 
is very small and no allotments are allowed for their 
families. The pay of the officers would not keep them 
ten minutes and old N. C O.'s of the British regulars 
could not afford to take commissions since they were 
financially vastly better off as non-commissioned 
officers than with commissions. Even now when they 
seek officers from the ranks it is hard to get them 
because of the poor pay. But early in the war if the 
officers didn't know much about the military game they 
did know the man game. Every one of them was all 
man. 

When we first joined up it was not at all uncom- 
mon to see the captains and lieutenants and even 
higher officers drilling in the ranks with the men with 
some British regular sergeant putting them through 
their paces. They were willing and di*d learn the 
military game. But we used to wonder, as we saw 
some of these rich young dandies who had bought 
their commissions, what they would do when they got 
over into France and came under real fire and into 
real danger. We found out the first day we went into 
the trenches. 

Every officer marched into the trenches at the head 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 195 

of his men. They were the first to. reach the firing 
trench and they saw us all assigned to our dugouts 
and taken care of before they took a thought for 
themselves. With their Sam Brown belts and their 
little slimsy walking sticks they were always plugging 
around in the trenches, always where the firing was 
heaviest, always going first wherever they asked their 
men to go. Most of them took great delight early in 
the war in walking around on the top of the parapets 
where we were forbidden to go because of the danger. 
They were up there, fair targets for German snipers, 
setting an example for reckless courage for the rest 
of us and more especially giving full evidence that they 
were not afraid. 

But that Sam Brown belt and slimsy walking stick 
soon made them at all times the targets for German 
snipers. Whenever we went over the top for any 
purpose, whether in an attack, a raid, patrol duty 
or in a work party, the officers always went at the 
head. I've been over dozens of times when I felt 
ashamed. Here I would be with a good rifle and 
bayonet as protection. Ahead of me, the target for 
a dozen snipers, would be some young officer, some 
former dandy of London, twirling his walking stick, 
a cigarette in his mouth and perhaps a monocle in his 
eye, walking along as unconcerned as if strolling over 
his estate back in Blighty. 



196 KILTIE McCOY 

But the British government soon discovered that 
our system was all wrong. The German officers were 
always in the rear where it was comparatively safe. 
Their losses were insignificant as compared with ours. 
Now you can't make a real officer in five minutes and 
our losses in officers soon became serious. As a result 
they were ordered not to take unnecessary chances, 
their Sam Browns and sticks were left behind when 
they went into action and they were clothed exactly 
like the men, usually even carrying a rifle. But they 
went along with us just the same. 

The slaughter of our officers, too, led to a new 
system. In 191 5 it became more difficult to buy com- 
missions and most of the officers from that time had 
some previous service in the ranks although usually 
they must still be men well fixed financially or else 
having no dependents to support. Lieutenant Woods, 
one of the best and bravest officers I ever knew, had 
served in the ranks. Lieutenant Bayliss had served as 
a private in the trenches and at nineteen was given a 
commission. Sandy Johnson was in my company. 
He had little education but was desperately in love 
with a school-teacher and I used to write his love let- 
ters for him. But he was a good soldier and a brave 
one and was given a commission. 

Over in France all lines of birth disappeared in 'a 
hurry. We were all just men together, engaged in 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 197 

the common business of killing Huns. The British 
army there became, I believe, the most democratic 
army in the world. Captain Armett, one of the finest 
of men and officers, married the daughter of 
an English lord and was himself of the nobility "but 
he was just one of the men all the time. He died lead- 
ing an attack only a few months after he married. 
Four machine-gun bullets caught him in the chest and 
two more in the top of his head as he fell. That's 
how fast a machine gun pumps lead at you. 

Of course horses were useless in the trenches, 
but even the officers, except a few of the highest rank, 
didn't have them when we were back of the lines. 
Horses are almost as valuable as men over there and 
officers must get around on foot even when in rest 
billets. 

So careful are they of horses that it was abso- 
lutely forbidden a soldier to climb up on a 
horse-drawn lorry or limber even though it might 
have no load on at all. That lorry might be abso- 
lutely empty and have four or even six horses drawing 
it, but no soldier was allowed to add a single pound to 
the burden of the horses. On the other hand if a 
motor lorry came along, the driver always stopped 
and piled on just as many men as could find a footing. 

Back in rest billets the officers played cricket, foot- 
ball, ran races and played all sorts of games with the 



198 KILTIE McCOY 

men. Very properly it is a rule in the British army 
as in all others that no officer shall box with an 
enlisted man. But the officers always attended our 
boxing matches and many times the officers would get 
into the ring and fight between themselves while the 
men stood around and cheered them on. 

The vast majority of British officers are most 
unselfish. The comfort of their men comes first and 
I've known many an officer to spend half the night 
trying to find more comfortable quarters for his men 
and never giving a thought as to where he would him- 
self sleep. 

It frequently happened that we would hike back 
perhaps ten miles from the trenches to go into rest 
billets. Tired, dirty, covered with mud and alive with 
cooties, we would drag ourselves at about dusk to some 
barn to which we had been assigned. Leaving us out- 
side the captain would make an inspection and then 
come out and ord^r us to make ourselves as comfort- 
able as possible outside. Perhaps that barn had a 
leaky roof or the pigs and cows kept under it made it 
vile-smelling and dirty. 

The captain would hike away perhaps two miles 
or more to the adjutant and inform him : "That barn 
you've got assigned to my men isn't fit for them to 
live in. I want something better." The usual reply 
to the complaint would be : "Well, It's all we've got." 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 199 

Then the captain would walk away and seek a 
better place on his account. He might be gone half the 
night, covering eight or ten miles more until at last 
he would find a decent place to house us. This he 
would commandeer and then go back to find us rolled 
up and asleep on the ground while he had been walk- 
ing. He would awaken us and tell us where he had 
been and what he had been doing. Of course he didn't 
have to explain his movements to us but it is the nature 
of the average British officer. Then he would lead 
us away to our better quarters and after we were all 
comfortably fixed he would find a place to sleep him- 
self. 

With the German officers the conditions were alto- 
gether different. Perhaps it was good judgment for 
them: to remain behind their men during an attack. 
I believe It was, but I have known them to and have 
personally seen them do a lot of things which were 
most certainly not dictated by good military judgment 
but rather by pure cussedness. 

Not long after we reached the firing line in France 
the Germans came at us in a considerable attack. We 
were holding our fire until they got closer although, 
of course, our artillery was busy with them. I saw 
here and there men in the advancing GeiTnan line pitch 
forward apparently shot. Now I knew they were not 
falling from our rifle fire because we were not firing. 



200 KILTIE McCOY 

I felt certain they were not falling from our artillery- 
fire either for while shrapnel does some mighty funny 
things a burst will hardly pick out a single man here 
and there and not touch those around him. In that 
attack we took a number of German prisoners and I 
asked one of them to explain to me what was getting 
those men I had seen fall here and there in their line. 
To my surprise and indignation I was informed it was 
the officers behind shooting them* in the back. It was 
the custom of the German officers if they saw a man 
waver a bit in an attack to shoot him down, thus 
forcing the rest to go ahead. 

I took occasion several times during my service 
to question German prisoners about their officers. I 
found that such practises were common. I learned, 
too, that it was a frequent occurrence for officers 
to strike their men on the slightest pretext, that fail- 
ure to salute or just being in the way was sufficient 
reason to bring about a rap on the head with a cane 
or revolver butt or a blow with a fist. 

In one batch of prisoners we took was a little fel- 
low with a great ugly scar on the side of his face. I 
supposed he had been wounded and asked him about 
it. But he told me an officer had struck him with his 
revolver butt for failure to salute him. He told me 
the men were required to stand at attention even In 
the trenches when an officer passed and that if a sol- 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 201 

dier happened to be walking in the streets of one of 
the occupied towns and an officer came along the sol- 
dier must step off into the gutter and salute as the 
officer passed, by on the sidewalk. The officer might 
return the salute if he chose or if he felt like it he 
might strike the soldier just to relieve his mind of 
anything he had on it. 

I learned, too, that no German dare report himself 
sick unless he was really very sick. When a man 
reports he is examined by two doctors. If they fail 
to find anything serious the matter with the man he 
is reported and recommended for punishment. That 
punishment is a public whipping and then confinement 
on bread and water for a period of days. 

In one attack in the Big Push we captured a large 
batch of prisoners, among them many officers. They 
were all confined in one big barbed-wire enclosure 
until such time as they could be sorted out and sent 
to the prison camps. While we were back in billets 
we went to look at some of these prisoners confined in 
a cage near us. One little German boy, apparently 
not more than sixteen years old, attracted our atten- 
tion. He was a weazened, underfed little brat and we 
took pity on him. We got a can of bully beef and 
some biscuits and stuck it through the wire to him. 
The way that boy went after that stuff looked as if 
he hadn't seen anything to eat in months. 



202 KILTIE McCOY 

But he had hardly got started on his banquet when 
a big Prussian officer came over to him, and with a 
harsh bark in German at the boy, he snatched the food 
away from the boy and hit him a rap in the face with 
his fist that l<nocked the lad down. Then he turned 
away and began to eat the food himself. Immediately 
we set up a yell and what we called that big Hun isn't 
fit for publication. But he didn't enjoy his feast long. 
Hardly had he taken the first bite when the English 
Tommy on guard, hearing our yells, came around. 
As soon as he saw what had happened he walked 
straight up to the Hun, poked him a couple of times 
with his bayonet, called him a few choice names and 
made him give back the bully beef and biscuits to the 
boy. Then with another prick of the bayonet he 
kicked the Hun away and stood guard while the boy 
ate. And if you could have seen the look of glee and 
satisfaction on that boy's face you might have gained 
an idea of what he had had to stand from his officers 
before he was captured. 

I learned that the Prussian officers were cordially 
hated not only by their own men but by the officers 
of other breeds of Huns except perhaps the Saxons 
who do not differ greatly from the Prussians. 
The time I was so nearly gassed and sent back to the 
hospital for observation I had a fine example of this 



THE MAN IN COMMAND 203 

hatred. As we were taken out to the ambulance to 
be sent to the hospital, a Prussian officer slightly- 
wounded was seated in an ambulance alone. A badly 
wounded Saxon officer was brought out. He could 
walk only with the aid of a couple of nurses. They 
started to place him in the ambulance with the Prus- 
sian, but he immediately drew back and announced 
very positively that he would not ride with the Prus- 
sian. So strongly did he protest that he was finally 
placed in another ambulance. 

And so while the British army is as democratic as 
any in the world, while the officers are real men and 
have a care for those they command, while they are 
loved and respected, the Germans, on the other hand, 
are hated by their men and apparently each hates the 
other. The men are merely slaves driven to the 
slaughter. Some day a big push will fail, the losses 
will have been tremendous and the suffering great. 
And then an uprising is coming in the ranks of the 
German army. And when it comes the slaughter will 
be appalling. Not a German officer will be left alive 
and mighty few Prussian soldiers will escape the 
wrath which the troops of the other German states 
will visit upon them. 



XVIII 



PALS 



Do you know what it is to have a pal? I mean a 
real pal, not just a friend who will knock around with 
you, drink with you, work with you and play with 
you, not just a mighty good fellow who will send you 
roses when you're sick and lend you money when 
you're broke, but a real pal. If you've never been in 
places where all was discomfort, where death was 
beckoning you always, where every minute was likely 
to be your last, where your life might depend upon 
the instant and unselfish action and perhaps sacrifice 
of your pal, where you were always watching him 
and he was always watching you, ready and eager to 
die if need be that the other might live, then you 
don't quite understand what I mean by the term "pal." 

Fischer and I were pals. Before the war we had 
been the kind of friends you know and understand, 
but we never quite knew how close we were until we 
got into France. 

Over there where we fought rats and cooties and 
Germans together, where we shared each other's last 
crust and last drop of water, when we faced death 

204 



PALS 205 

daily, shoulder to shoulder, we learned what it really 
meant to be pals. 

More than once Jim saved my life and now that 
he is gone, I'm mighty glad that I was able to save 
his on one or two occasions. 

We were on a bombing raid. Fischer was second 
bayonet man. As usual I had named myself first 
bayonet man, but I always felt a little better when I 
knew Jim was at my elbow. 

We entered the German trenches all right, and, 
according to the plan, turned to the left. I posted my 
men to stop any Germans from coming in on our 
flank and was then ready to begin bombing dugouts. 
A communication trench right here must be cleaned 
out. Just a few paces up the trench was a little bend. 
It was necessary to know what was around that bend 
before we started to do much else. 

**You men all wait here until I take a peek around 
that bend," I ordered. 

I had rounded the turn and was out of sight of 
my men when all at once a Prussian, bayonet ready, 
faced me. We both lunged and parried. His bayonet 
passed over my shoulder and mine passed over his. 
Neither was hurt. I knew instantly, however, that 
here was one German of the very few indeed who 
knew how to fight with a bayonet and had the nerve 
to stand up and do it. 



2o6 KILTIE McCOY 

Quickly we were back on guard. I lunged once 
more. He parried deftly and I had to move quickly 
to parry his counter. I watched him with care. He 
was calm, determined, silent and skilful. He knew 
he had a fight on and was fully prepared to accept 
the gauge of battle. 

This time he lunged. I parried and was back at 
him. He caught me, calmly turning my bayonet aside. 
I thrust again quickly. Bang! He brought his rifle 
barrel down with a smash upon my bayonet. The 
blade broke off short. 

My heart sank. The end had come at last. Before 
me was a sturdy German fully armed. I stood help- 
less with my rifle but no bayonet. 

The German showed his confidence and power by 
not exultantly rushing at me. He had won and he 
didn't propose now to lose by any false motions. He 
might have thought I would shoot him, but I had 
failed to work my bolt since firing the last shot. Now 
I had an empty shell in the firing chamber. I must 
work my bolt to eject that and to inject a live cart- 
ridge. To do this I must loosen my grip with one 
hand upon my rifle. Manifestly that would be 
fatal. The German guessed my plight quickly, possi- 
bly because he, too, was in that same predicament, 
but he had a bayonet. 

He didn't rush. He didn't laugh nor gloat over 



PALS 207 

me. He was a true sportsman who had taken his 
chance and won. Slowly and with grim determina- 
tion written on his face, he advanced upon me. There 
was nothing to do but retreat. Holding my rifle 
ahead of me ready to attempt to parry if he lunged, 
I backed down the trench. Death stood in front of 
me. My chances were one in a million, 

I watched that German like a hawk, I could see 
his muscles tighten as he -gripped his rifle ready for 
the thrust that would spell death to me. I saw his 
jaws grit together when — a rifle cracked back of me 
and a ball passed so close to my right ear as almost 
to burn it. The German, just on the point of lunging, 
crumpled in a heap. The rifle ball had caught him 
squarely in the chin. 

I spun around like lightning for I was more 
frightened now by the closeness of that bullet than by 
the bayonet, which a moment before had glittered in 
front of me. 

"Pretty close, that, Pat," said Fischer. 

"You damned fool, what are you trying to do, 
shoot me?" I yelled at him and quickly added: "I 
thought I ordered you to stay back there." Then as he 
was near me I threw my arms around him and hugged 
him while the tears rolled down my cheeks. 

Jim was one of the finest shots in the battalion and 
because of this had been designated a sniper. He had 



2o8 KILTIE McCOY 

come up the trench after me and seeing I was in 
trouble had taken a mighty big chance in sending a 
ball just over my shoulder. 

And when that terrific strain under which I had 
stood for a few seconds had been suddenly and unex- 
pectedly relaxed I just had to abuse Jim first before I 
thanked .him. 

In our battalion we had two chaplains, Father 
Lyman, the priest, and Padre Black, the Scotch Pres- 
byterian. Two braver or finer men God never put 
life into. We loved them and they looked upon us as 
their boys and made no distinction because of our 
religious preferences. 

Their one great regret was that they could not go 
into the fight with us. They did follow along as close 
behind as the regulations permitted and that meant 
they were usually not more than ten feet behind our 
line when we were advancing. 

Both these chaplains went armed and they didn't 
hesitate to shoot if the occasion required, for the Ger- 
mans took particular delight apparently in shooting 
our chaplains and Red Cross workers. During many 
an attack I have seen these two just behind the firing 
line caring for the wounded while the bullets and 
the shells were dropping all around them. 

They had made for themselves tunics with tre- 
mendously large pockets and big belts thickly studded 



PALS 209 

with hooks. Before every attack they waulcf fill their 
pockets with sandwiches and cigarettes and hang 
water-bottles all around their belts. Father Lyman 
could hardly stagger under his load for he was very 
small, but whenever a man fell either he or Padre 
Brown was quickly at his side with a bottle of water, 
and whenever we had a few minutes' respite in the 
fighting they were always there with the sandwiches. 

It was not long after Jim had saved my life in 
the trench when the big Somme push came on. In 
August, 19 1 6, High Wood near Little Bazantine, in 
front of Contalmaison and Pozieres was the scene of 
much terrific fighting. Time after time the wood was 
taken and retaken and always at tremendous cost. 

Fischer was a Catholic. He had gone to Father 
Lyman, made confession and had received commun- 
ion. Indeed all of us, Protestants- and Catholics alike, 
knowing the hard fighting before us, sought comfort 
from the chaplains. 

About six In the evening the word came back to 
us: "Bombers at the double." That meant dirty- 
work at close quarters. It meant that somewhere 
British troops were mighty hard pressed, perhaps had 
been driven back a bit and must have help to reestab- 
lish themselves. I was in charge of the bombers of 
our outfit at this time, so I got them together and away 
we went at the double, following our guide. 



2IO KILTIE McCOY 

Fritz had forced our troops out of an important 
trench. The Britons had returned to the attack, 
gained a foothold in the trench again, and all around 
the fighting was hand to hand in a great struggle 
for its possession. 

I'll never forget the sight that confronted us as 
we reached that trench. Friend and foe were all 
mixed up together. Shells and shrapnel from German 
and from English guns were dropping in the strug- 
gling mass and men were dying by the hundreds. 

At the double we ran forward and with a yell 
began to hurl our bombs. The sight as we leaped into 
the trench was sickening even to those who were 
accustomed to scenes of slaughter. The trench was 
choked with bodies, many of them dead. English and 
Germans lay together where they had fallen in the 
final struggle. Blood was everywhere. Suffering 
and death were all about. 

But there was no time to think of it, no time even 
to see it in all its awfulness. The situation was des- 
perate, but our arrival gave us the balance of power, 
and the Germans were pressed back from the trench. 
But they came on again, wave after wave. Our artil- 
lery — and their own as well — blasted holes in their 
solid masses. Our machine guns cut them down and 
our bombs made gaps in their lines only to be quickly 
filled with fresh sacrifices. Fischer stood beside me. 



PALS 211 

Each of us had a man pulling the pins from the bombs 
and passing them to us ready to throw. 

Fischer suddenly clapped his hand to his shoulder. 
A piece of shrapnel shell casing had ripped the shirt 
from his left shoulder and cut a considerable gash in 
the flesh. I turned to help him : 

''Never mind me," he said. "It's nothing. Keep 
on giving 'em hell." 

He turned away, and presently found a stretcher- 
bearer who bandaged his wound and started him back 
afoot to a dressing station. 

Fischer looked toward the spot where we were 
fighting, hesitated a moment — he told me afterward 
— and then came back to his place by my side. 

"What are you doing here?" I yelled in his ear. 
"Go on to the rear where you belong." 

"You'll get yours in a minute. I'll wait for you 
and we'll go back together," was his response. 

His right arm was sound so he got a man to pull 
pins for him and began throwing again. 

So close were the opposing forces that our shrap- 
nel had to explode just in the rear of our line and 
spray out over us to get the enemy in front. Every 
shell must be most carefully timed and must also be 
a perfect shell or it was likely to get some of our own 
men. A shell from one of our batteries came whin- 
ing overhead. Something was wrong with it; it 



212 KILTIE McCOY 

was going low. The next thing I knew Fischer lay 
dead in the trench beside me, the top of his skull 
blown away. 

My arm fell nerveless at my side and the tears 
rushed to my eyes. For a moment I couldn't see the 
Germans in front of me, I couldn't tell where to place 
my bombs. 

But it could not be so for long. Fritz was pressing 
hard. Fischer's body was in the way as it lay there. 
I took his identification disk and other valuables. 

**Give a hand there," said a fighting man. 

I looked at him. Then we took poor Fischer's 
body and tossed it up over the parados out of the way 
— we must have room to plant our feet and to fight. 
And we did fight ! It was six in the evening when we 
went in; it was ten the following morning when we 
were relieved. There had not been an idle moment 
during that time. 

As I went back I saw Fischer's body still lying 
where we had tossed it. Oh, how I wanted to give it 
a decent burial, but there was no time. 

Somewhere in France, in a ditch with many others, 
friends and foes together; somewhere in France in an 
unmarked grave lies the body of my pal. 




Out of Hospital 



XIX 



FRITZ S BACK YARD 



It was in August, 191 6, during the big Somme 
push, that the British for the first time really attempt- 
ed to test their driving power against the German lines. 
A flank attack was being made out of Little Bazan- 
tine on Combles, over a front of about four miles. 
The Royal Scots were in the front line ready to go 
over. We were to leave our trenches at two-thirty in 
the morning and were to be replaced by the Suffolks. 
We made our way out and close up to Fritz's trenches 
while our guns let loose upon him. But he let loose 
at the same time so that No Man's Land was being 
peppered with every kind of shell and bullet Fritz had, 
while his trenches were getting everything we had. 

We lay hugging the ground, watching the bom- 
bardment, urging our own gunners to greater 
exertion, wondering when one of Fritz's shells would 
get us. I rolled somewhat on my side and chanced to 
look up. Above me was a heavy cloud of smoke, a 
■whirl of metal and a glare of light from the bursting 
shells. Suddenly I rubbed my eyes. Was I alive or 
had I already passed to the next world? I pinched 

213 



214 KILTIE McCOY 

myself. It hurt. Was there really something in' 
that story of the "Angel of Mons"? I was alive and 
my eyes were open. But it was hard to believe. Up 
there above the field of death, apparently in the thick- 
est of the flying metal, I saw a snow-white dove. 
For a moment I couldn't believe it; then I remem- 
bered that both sides were using homing pigeons for 
messengers. This one had been released, and proba- 
bly stunned by the shocks, had lost its direction and 
was flying aimlessly about unmindful of shot and shell. 

At three-ten came the word : "Ready." Each of 
us grasped his rifle a little firmer, looked to see that 
everything was right, rose to one knee and waited for 
the dash. Two minutes later came the command: 
"Right." And we went in. Our barrage lifted for us 
and Fritz came out of his dugouts and gave us a taste 
of real hell. 

Our orders were to follow the barrage and it had 
been stated the barrage would probably go to the 
third-line trenches which would mean that we would 
halt in the second line. It was each battalion for 
itself, for in that melee there could be little communi- 
cation between units. 

We fought our way through the first line and into 
the second line. Here Fritz came back at us hard. 
Stubbornly we battled with him hand to hand all 
along the line. The units on our right and left flanks 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 215 

were driven back. We knew nothing of this at the 
time for it was impossible for any signal to be heard, 
impossible for a runner to get through. 

Somebody in our battalion finally noticed our 
isolation and ordered us to fall back. That order 
never reached our platoon. We stood there battling 
for our lives. By chance I happened to look back. 
My eyes nearly popped from my head for behind us 
I saw the Germans. On both sides of us were Ger- 
mans ; in front of us were Germans. Eight of our fifty 
men stood there alone, surrounded. Retreat was im- 
possible. It was every man for himself, and the devil 
stood a good chance of getting us all. I called the 
attention of the other men to our predicament and 
each began to^ look out for himself. 

I decided my best chance was to go forward. I 
saw a little clearing, leaped out of the trench and made 
for the open space between the second- .and third-line 
German trenches. Of course I was in as great danger 
of being hit by British shells as by German bullets. I 
made for a near-by shell-hole. In it lay a dead Ger- 
man. "You shall be of some use in the world, al- 
though you never were before," I said. Into that 
shell-hole I crawled and pulled that corpse over me as 
if we had both died there fighting. 

Shrapnel from British guns fell all around us — 
the dead German and me. None hit us, fortunately. 



2i6 KILTIE McCOY 

The battle line moved back as the Germans regained 
the lost ground. I was left farther and farther in the 
rear, yet British shells never ceased to rain on all the 
territory around. 

I heard voices — German voices. Quickly I closed 
my eyes and held my breath. A German officer, I 
took him to be, and a soldier passed the rim of the 
shell-hole. They stopped and looked at us. That the 
man would come into the shell-hole and stick a bayonet 
into me to make sure I was dead, I was certain. They 
stood there talking. Then the talking ceased. I 
strained my ears for the sound of their approaching 
footsteps. I had a vision of them standing above me, 
bayonet poised and ready to strike. It was only by an 
effort of the will that I refrained from curling up as 
I knew I would when I felt the steel. I suffered all 
the pain of the wound so certain was I that it was 
coming. 

When I heard them talk again and knew that I 
was safe once more I almost screamed. Their voices 
were growing weaker. They were moving away. 
The tears started, as once more I opened my eyes 
and knew they had gone. Then a short time after, 
from sheer exhaustion and nervous strain, I fell 
asleep. 

How long I slept I do not know\ What dangers 
there were in that sleep you can easily guess. Had 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 217 

those same two Germans passed me as I slept they 
might have seen me breathe, might have heard me 
snore, for I slept heavily. I might have moved In 
my sleep. Had they passed again I never would have 
awakened in this world. 

When I opened my eyes I found it was dark. I 
looked at my watch. It had long ago stopped. I lay 
a while and thought. I couldn't remain here. I 
must make a try to get back to our own lines. The 
worst I could get was a bullet, a bayonet or perhaps 
capture. I might get back, although, realizing I had 
to cross two lines of German trenches, the chances 
seemed mighty slim. 

I was hungry and terribly thirsty. I had had 
nothing to eat since we entered the fight at two-thirty 
the morning before. My water-bottle was gone and 
I was suffering greatly, I threw off the dead German 
and searched him. First I wanted to know what time 
it was and thought perhaps he might have a watch. 
But he had none. Neither had he water-bottle nor 
anything about him to eat. But he had saved my life 
so I suppose I should not have complained at these 
little oversights. 

I began to crawl. Carefully, inch by inch, I made 
my way in what I supposed was the direction of the 
second-line trenches. Shells from British guns fell 
occasionally in the area through which I crawled and 



3i8 KILTIE McCOY 

one fragment fell so near me that I reached out my 
hand and touched it. It burned my fingers. 

I noticed with a start that a light wind was blow- 
ing from the British trenches in my face. Suppose 
they should launch a gas attack! I felt for my gas 
mask. Then I breathed a sigh of relief. It was there. 

I guessed It must be getting toward dawn. Sud- 
denly out of the darkness came a German challenge. 
My heart leaped into my mouth but I had sufficient 
presence of mind to lie perfectly still, to freeze. Evi- 
dently the sentry thought it a dog or that he had been 
"hearing thijlgs," for he did not challenge me again. 
Like a crab I began carefully and slowly to crawl 
backward until I was out of sound of this sentry. I 
could see a streak in the eastern sky. It warned me 
it was time to take cover for the day. I found a shell- 
hole, crawled into it and lay there without food or 
water until darkness came again. 

At one time during the day I was startled by the 
sound of Scotch and English voices quite near me. 
I was close by a communication trench and probably 
the voices were those of prisoners being taken to the 
rear. I wondered frequently as I lay there if it would 
not be wise to go out and surrender. But that pros- 
pect was worse than my present hunger and thirst 
so I determined to wait until night and once more 
attempt to reach our own lines. 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 219 

Exhaustion finally overcame me and I slept. It 
was night when once more I opened my eyes. I -had 
no German to frisk now, so I lost no time in crawling 
out of my shell-hole and starting on my way once 
more. I still had all my equipment and my rifle. 
But my water-bottle and my iron rations were gone. 
The equipment w^as a burden and nothing more, but 
I held on to it as a result of training and a matter 
of pride. 

I had not gone far before I came to the com- 
munication trench along which the Englishman and 
the Scotchman had been walking. Like a snake, 
with my head close to the ground and working only 
with my elbows, I Inched myself up to that trench. 
Then I lay still and listened Intently for the sound 
of sentries' voices. I heard none. I pulled myself 
forward a bit more and a bit more, until, raising my 
head, I peered cautiously over into the trench. I 
looked both ways. Nobody was in sight. Silently I 
lifted myself ta a crouching attitude, and then I leaped 
across, falling on the other side as a football player 
falls upon the ball. I lay perfectly still a few minutes, 
but heard nothing. I had crossed that trench without 
being discovered. 

Once more I began to crawl, and once more out 
of the darkness came a challenge. I was approaching 
a second-line trench. I lay still again, but nothing 



220 KILTIE McCOY 

happened. So I crawled backward and when at a safe 
distance I turned to the right and paralleled the sec- 
ond-line trench. I crossed one more communication 
trench in safety, then I again worked up close to the 
second-line trench and began crawling from bay to 
bay seeking one not occupied. 

At length I came to one where all was quiet, I 
approached it an inch at a time and peered in. As 
nobody was in sight, I leaped, fell on the other side 
and lay still. Nothing happened. One main line 
trench had been safely crossed in my wiggle toward 
the British lines. 

But the front-line trenches still lay ahead of me. 
There was the last serious barrier but it was the one 
where danger was greatest. Here the sentries would 
be more keenly alert. Could I make it ? Hunger and 
thirst and ,the nervous strain had weakened me, yet it 
was nerves that kept me going. 

I was just behind the front-line trenches and I 
could hear Fritz jabbering away. As I reached each 
bay I paused to listen. But I must hurry or day 
would break before I could make it. I had gone 
slowly and painfully along a considerable distance 
when I reached a bay where all was quiet. I raised 
my head to look in, and for an instant my heart 
stopped beating. Standing with his back against the 
front wall of the trench with his face looking di- 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 221 

rectly into mine stood a German sentry. For what 
seemed an hour we looked at each other. I expected 
a yell and a shot. Neither came. He did not move 
a muscle. Whether he was asleep or just brooding so 
deeply that my slowly rising head had failed to impress 
itself upon him, I shall never know, but he made 
neither sound nor motion. 

Very gradually I withdrew my head and very 
carefully I pushed my body back from that danger 
spot. Still no sound from tlie sentry. I moved back 
farther and farther. Then I lay down to recover my 
nerve. At last I moved again, past one bay after 
another, listening always to the chatter of the Ger- 
mans within. 

Once more I came to a bay where all was still, 
and again with even more caution than before I 
crawled up. Slowly I raised my head, my heart 
thumping so hard it almost made me sick, and looked 
the length of the bay. It seemed deserted. I pulled 
my knees up under me, leaped and landed over the 
parapet in front of the first line. To my infinite sur- 
prise nothing happened. The worst was past. 

By the time I wiggled out through Fritz's wires, 
dawn was upon me, so I crawled into a shell-hole just 
outside the entanglements. And none too soon, foir 
a British shell came screaming overhead. In an in- 
stant hundreds more followed. Briton was bombard- 



222. KILTIE McCOY 

ing Fritz's trenches. My chances seemed mighty good 
for stopping a piece of one of those shells, but I lay 
close while Fritz got his. Fortunately I was jiist 
far enough outside the entanglements to escape the 
fire. 

When a man's in a pinch he does all sorts of funny 
and foolish things. Here was I, two long days with- 
out food or drink, weak and exhausted physically and 
nervously. Death was all around me now, beckoning 
me, reaching out for me, but not quite touching me. 
There came to my mind as I lay there the picture 
of Glassford out in No Man's Land under our bar- 
rage waiting to attack and yelling in high glee : "Give 
'em hell, Briton! Give 'em hell!" And I laughed 
myself and repeated as Glassford had: "Give 'em 
hell, Briton ! Give 'em hell !" 

So intense was tlie bombardment that I looked 
for our troops to attack. I hoped they would, for 
then my troubles would be over and I would go back 
behind our own lines. But they didn't come and the 
bombardment died down. Fritz, however, was ap- 
parently expecting an attack for no sooner had the 
British fire quit than the Germans opened up a bar- 
rage in No Man's Land expecting to catch British 
troops in it. Fortunately I was near enough to Fritz's 
wires now to escape his barrage just as I had been far 
enough away to escape the British fire. For an hour 
they kept it up. 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 223 

I determined to get out of my equipment. Lying 
on my back I wriggled out of it but I still clung to 
my rifle and my gas mask. At length the Germans 
quit firing, and I began to crawl once more for the 
British lines. I dare not remain out another night 
and I must make the trenches during daylight for to 
attempt to reach them at night would probably draw 
the fire of some of our sentries and I didn't care to 
die that way. 

From one little knoll to another and from one 
little depression to another I worked my way. Two 
or three times German snipers caught a glimpse of me 
and fired, but they didn't get me though they came 
near enough. 

At length, almost exhausted and feeling my 
strength and nerve going fast, I determined to get 
up and run for it. As I lay there considering my 
chances when Fritz should open up, I happened to 
remember some of the Diamond Dicks and Buffalo 
Bills I had read in my youth and to the great scandal 
of my family, and I recalled that the hero always man- 
aged to outwit the Indians by running zigzag. I 
determined to try it. 

The time had come when I could make better 
headway without my rifle, so I left it in the little de- 
pression in which I was hiding, gathered myself for 
a spring, took a long breath and beat it. Weak though 
I was I made Arthur IXiffy and all the other famous 



224 KILTIE McCOY 

sprinters look like plow horses beside me. From one 
side to the other I jumped but keeping always toward 
the British lines just ahead. 

Fritz's snipers opened up on me but Diamond 
Dick's methods proved successful. Over the two 
strands of wire, which was all we had in front of 
our trenches at this point, I hurdled and without look- 
ing below dropped into the trench. 

An English Tommy was cleaning his rifle as I 
came in. I landed squarely on his shoulders, knock- 
ing him down of course. He was too surprised to 
speak and too frightened to move. He thought the 
Germans had attacked. 

I made myself known as the men crowded around 
me, plying me with questions and filling me with tea. 
I took one big cup of it boiling hot, then I sat down 
and cried like a baby. My nerves at last had cracked 
under the strain and it was necessary to take me to 
the rear. 

Lieutenant Sutherland took me in charge and gave 
me a pull at a flask. Then he opened some cans of 
sardines, gave me hard biscuit and a cake of choco- 
late. No finer banquet was ever served by the Lord 
Mayor of London. 

Along with others I had been reported missing 
and the report was already at headquarters. Lieu- 
tenant Sutherland sent a nmner to stop it and al- 



FRITZ'S BACK YARD 225 

though the colonel had sealed it and had it ready to 
go, he tore it up and determined to wait in case 
somebody else should also come in. 

And one other man did come in that night. A 
fellow named Penny tumbled into the trenches. He 
had been out in No Man's Land during the day, while 
I was there, but had decided to wait until night be- 
fore coming in. He all but lost his life in doing so for 
the very thing I had feared happened. He was fired 
upon by one of our men who fortunately missed. Penny 
was a wreck, however. He spent the next six months 
in the hospital before he was ready for duty again. 

Four of the eight men who were cut off out there 
returned; two came in the same day of the fight and 
Penny and I later. 

But it was a sad company I returned to. Captain 
Armett had been killed and so had Sergeant-Major 
Cameron and many another good fellow who had 
gone into the melee that day. I have often thought 
of that German sentry who looked me in the face but 
didn't see me and I have wondered whether he slept 
with his eyes open; but asleep or not, he saved my 
life by not taking it, and I wish him luck. 



XX 



VULNERABLE 



For more than two years I had fought the fight 
against the Hun. For more than two years I had 
had all the excitement that the greatest war the world 
ever saw could produce. If there was anything in the 
fighting line I had missed it was because it was not 
to be found on the western front. For more than 
two years I had passed through it all and had re- 
turned practically unscathed. I had suffered a little 
from gas and had a bit of a scratch on the cheek but 
neither amounted to anything. My time had not yet 
come and I began to believe it was not to come in 
this war. Men had been shot on each side of me, 
in front of me and behind me, I had all but lost out 
when the big German had broken my bayonet but 
always something had intervened to save me. 

Achilles had a vulnerable spot on his heel. April 
9, 191 7, Easter Monday morning, I learned that I, 
too, had a vulnerable spot, and tliat spot was my left 
arm just below the elbow. 

The British high command was planning a big 
push at Arras. As early as January tenth we made 

226 



VULNERABLE 227 

our first move which was eventually to bring us into 
that fight, although when we moved we marched 
directly away from it. 

In heavy marching order we left Fleurbaix the 
evening of Januarys tenth. All night long we tramped 
through mud and water and snow in the coldest 
weather France had known in years. Directly north 
we marched, grinding along hour after hour, won- 
dering if ever we were going to rest again. 

At length we were in behind Ypres. That we 
were to attack here we felt certain. We took battle 
formation and moved up in sight of the enemy. Little 
attempt was made to conceal us. Fritz had a good 
look at us and our aviators reported he was massing 
troops to resist our expected attack. 

Night came again. Instead of resting or moving 
up Into the trenches as we had expected, we were once 
more put in motion but not toward the enemy. In- 
stead we executed a wide circle and were soon headed 
south again. Five hours out of twenty- four was the 
most that was allowed us for rest and that we took 
in the open, usually on the bare ground in the snow 
and mud and water. 

The nights were bitterly cold. We usually slej>fe 
close in groups for warmth. But a few, from eK- 
haustion, would walk back from the roadside and lie 
down by themselves. Next morning we must kick 



228 KILTIE McCOY 

them to awaken them. One morning three of the 
men in our battalion failed to respond to our kicks. 
Exhausted with the march and the cold, they had 
frozen to death. In our brigade eight men altogether 
thus clicked it. 

Day after day we kept marching southward until 
at last we were in the vicinity of Arras. Here the 
roads were jammed with troops and with transports 
of all kinds. Long lines of lorries and wagons were 
moving forward and back. Always one line was mov- 
ing toward the front, while another, usually empty, 
was returning. Artillery, ammunition trains, supply 
wagons, everything needed to prepare an army for 
a great smash was in motion. Through this great 
mass of vehicles we tramped in single file working our 
way among fighting, swearing teamsters, dodging 
horses and motor vehicles until at last we went into 
hutments ten miles behind the lines. 

Here were our headquarters. So many men were 
up in front that there was room for no more. In 
the morning we must march out of our hutments, drill 
tliat ten miles to the trenches, do whatever work was 
there for us to do and at night march back once more 
over that ten miles of mud. Or at night we would 
march up to the front line, pull off a bombing raid, 
perhaps, and in the morning, tired and exhausted, 
march back again for rest. 



VULNERABLE 229 

That it was to be a big push was manifest by the 
large number of troops, the great masses of artillery, 
the tremendous amount of ammunition and supplies 
being constantly brought forward. Since it was to be 
a big push a vast amount of preparatory work must be 
done. Saps must be dug; trenches must be strength- 
ened, material must be brought up by hand from the 
last points to which the vehicles could approach. Pa- 
trols were out all the time. Bombing raids were of 
nightly occurrence. 

Freeland, Crow, Glass ford and all the gang with 
which I trained were there — all except Jim Fischer, 
and many a time we spoke of him and wished he 
could be with us in the big fight about to come. 

April third we went Into the trenches at St. Cath- 
erines. April seventh, the Saturday before Easter, 
word came down for me to report to headquarters. 
From company headquarters I was sent to battalion 
headquarters. A big raid with one hundred men was 
on for that night. Thirty of the men had been drawn 
from our company but all were rookies and strangers 
to me. Captain Cowan was to command. The airmen 
had reported that Fritz had apparently evacuated his 
front-line trenches, so we were to go to his second 
line and grab off a few prisoners for identification 
and Infomiatlon. 

It was to be a rush job with no rehearsal, for the 



230 KILTIE McCOY 

time was at hand when we were to launch our drive. 
"Get prisoners and bring 'em back alive," was the 
only order we got. 

The ground conditions and the weather were the 
worst in the world. The. mud was up to our thighs 
so that just to walk was all a man could do. 

Ten-thirty in the evening was the kick-off hour. 
We went out according to schedule. Captain Cowan 
and I reconnoitered the front line and found the air- 
men were right. Fritz had evacuated it. The artil- 
lery opened up on the second line and we were given 
forty minutes in which to do our work. We rushed 
the second line and began bombing dugouts. 

I yelled down a dugout, ordering the Germans to 
come up. A shot was the reply but It missed me as 
usual, and I laughed, for I was full of the idea that I 
was invulnerable. But I was angered at the German 
who had shot at me and having a Stoke's mortar, an 
infernal machine weighing about thirteen pounds, I 
tossed It down. It quieted all who were there. 

In the next dugout we got one weazened little 
German boy, not more than sixteen years of age, 
undersized, underfed and scared to death. This lad 
and one other about like him, were all the prisoners 
we got. And we paid dearly for them, too, for we 
lost Captain Cowan and five men before we got back 
with those two measly little Huns. 



VULNERABLE 231 

As soon as we were safely back in the trenches a 
party of us went out into No Man's Land in search 
of our lost men. We thought perhaps we might find 
them wounded. Four of them we found dead, but 
Captain Cowan and one private we failed to locate. 

Then we went to our hutments for a brief rest. 
At four-thirty Easter Sunday we hiked it back through 
the mud to the trenches once more. While I was 
dragging along in that mess, I thought of the folks 
back home and of the Easter parades they were per- 
haps seeing. I wondered if my sisters and friends 
were going to church dressed in all their new Easter 
finery and I laughed in spite of myself at the appear- 
ance of the Easter parade in France in which I was 
taking part. 

Lieutenant Fleet was in command of our platoon. 
He had already lost three brothers in the war and 
was the last boy in the family. He had come out for 
revenge and he got it, too. 

At five-fifteen Easter Monday morning we were 
ready to go over for the big attack. At five-thirty we 
were over. In the German front line we found no one. 
We had been given seven minutes here to make certain 
nobody was concealed in the dugouts, to come out 
later and attack us from the rear. Then we went 
on to the second line. 

We took no prisoners here. We were in a hurry, 



232 KILTIE McCOY 

having only an hour in which to clean up the trench, 
and were anxious to get on to the third line where 
we knew we should have hard fighting. We cleaned 
up the second line in a half-hour and set out flags to 
signal we were ready. We promptly got the order 
to carry on. 

The third line was choked with men who gave us 
a hot reception. We sent back some three or four 
hundred prisoners here and cleaned up as quickly as 
we could. It was no time for courtesies and we killed 
as fast as the opportunity presented. 

"Somebody's calling you, McCoy," a man said to 
me. 

"You're crazy," I replied. 

But from the bowels of the earth just at that mo- 
ment I heard distinctly the call: "Pat McCoy." 

I stopped an instant. Near me was a dugout 
from which I once more heard that cry: "Pat Mc- 
Coy." 

I recognized the voice. Foolishly, very, very fool- 
ishly, so foolishly that I ought to have lost my life, 
I plunged down into that dugout. Half a dozen 
Germans were huddled there, but all that I saw was a 
stretcher on which lay the form of Captain Cowan. 
Without a thought of the enemies all about me, I 
grabbed that man and hugged him. How it hap- 
pened I don't know, but the Germans stood back. Per- 



TORLUISH, 

GRANGE LOAN, 

EDINBURGH. 






VULNERABLE 233 

haps they had had enough of war and were glad to 
be made prisoners. At any rate they had their chance 
and didn't take it. 

Both Cowan's thighs were broken and because of 
his helpless condition, the deep mud and the heavy 
British bombardment, the Germans had not been able 
to send him to the rear. I yelled up the dugout for 
help. It came at once. We sent back the Germans 
and immediately got stretcher-bearers to care for Cap- 
tain Cowan. 

Then we got the word to carry on. Out of the 
third-line trenches we climbed and advanced toward 
the fourth. Up the line of our company came a mes- 
sage passed from mouth to mouth from Geordie Free- 
land : "How's Pat McCoy ?" Foolishly and thought- 
lessly again I stepped out ahead of the line so I could 
look down to where Freeland was. Then I waved 
my left arm above my head. An instant more and a 
ball caught me just below the elbow. A sniper seeing 
my wave had suspected I was an officer giving a sig- 
nal. His aim had been true. The force of the blow 
spun me half around. 

"Pat's got it," I heard somebody say. 

"Carry on," I called to Lance-Corporal Knowett, 
and began seeking shelter. I found a shell-hole and 
crawled into it, suffering tremendously with the pain, 
for the bones of my arm were smashed and protrud- 



234 KILTIE McCOY 

ing through the flesh, with the blood pouring from the 
wound which had been made by an explosive bullet. 

In the shell-hole I found a man with a great gash in 
his thigh. He was trying to bind it up but could not 
get at it. I helped him as best I could with my one 
arm and succeeded to some extent in stopping the flow 
of blood. Then I propped him up a bit and he, bound 
up my arm. 

I could walk but he was helpless. I crawled out 
of the shell-hole, found stretcher-bearers and sent 
them to him. Then I started back toward a dressing 
station. I threw away all my equipment except my 
water-bottle. This I hung to, for I was terribly 
thirsty, as are all men when wounded. But progress 
was slow in that mud and I retained only what I most 
needed. 

At last I met more stretcher-bearers. I was be- 
coming so weak I could hardly move. They insisted 
on carrying me, but the mud was so deep they could 
make no headway so, with a man on each side of me, 
I tried to walk again. 

There were two men not far to my right. A shell 
came over and blew them from the face of the earth. 
It threw me probably fifty feet and left me uncon- 
scious, a helpless nervous wreck lying there in the 
mud. 

About midnight stretcher-bearers found me all but 



VULNERABLE 235 

dead, mumbling and quivering from shell shock. They 
took me back to a dressing station where .my arm 
was bound up decently. But I was all through. So 
far as I was concerned, the war was ended. Never 
again would I face Fritz. He had at last found my 
vulnerable spot. 



XXI 

MOTHER 

I WAS taken back to the casualty clearing station 
and labeled as among those hopelessly wounded. It 
was not the wound in my ami but the shell shock that 
made my case so serious. I was strapped fast to a 
stretcher so I could not move and there I lay quiver- 
ing and trembling and mumbling to myself, starting 
at every slight shock or sound, unable to control 
myself, a wreck. 

Around me were wrecks of w^hat had once been 
men, wounded in the most horrible manner. Life 
still flickered in their tortured bodies, flickered for a 
moment and then in one after another went out. The 
station was a long building and the stretchers bearing 
these wrecks were piled in tiers four stretchers high. 
None here was expected to recover. We were the 
hopelessly wounded. 

Through my mind as I lay there passed the vision 
of my mother and sisters. I had always been big 
and strong and husky, somewhat wild, and had, I 
suspect, caused my dear old mother many a heart- 
ache in the days back home. Out here on the battle- 



MOTHER 237 

fields of France I had been called a devil-may-care 
sort. I was the "mad Yank" to all who knew me. I 
had believed myself invulnerable and had learned to 
laugh at danger. But now among the hopelessly 
wounded my only thought and my only desire was to 
see my mother. 

I realized I was expected to die and I didn't care 
much if I did. It would bring relief, but before I 
went I wanted to see my mother. If she could only 
come to me just once, I would gladly die. And then, 
great big boob that I was, I lay there and bawled, 
bawled for my mother and was not ashamed. 

What was that? A soft voice spoke to me. Surely 
it was the voice of a woman speaking in my own 
tongue, speaking English, a language I had not heard 
from the lips of a woman for more than eight months. 
Was it a woman in the flesh or was it an angel ? Had 
I already passed to the Great Beyond? I was afraid 
to open my eyes. The voice spoke again, softly. 
Surely it was an English voice and It was the voice of 
a woman. It was not sneering at me either because 
I was crying for my mother. 

"Dear boy," that voice said, "what can I do to 
make you comfortable?" 

A cool hand was laid upon my head. It was a 
soft little hand and felt just like another that many 
a time had been laid upon my head back in the days 



23S KILTIE McCOY 

when I was a little chap and mother had put me to 
bed. 

"Dear boy," said that soft voice again, "what can 
I do for you?" 

I opened my eyes. I was alive. I was not dream- 
ing. Before me stood a little woman, clothed all in 
white with a big red cross on her. I looked at her 
as if she were a vision. I tried to speak but my lips 
only mumbled unintelligible things. Yet my mind 
was clear. 

She calmed me and soothed me. By a great effort 
I managed to control myself enough to cry out: "I 
want my mother." 

Then I fell to crying again. I watched her in- 
tently, this vision which to me then was the loveliest 
I had ever seen. I saw something shining in her hand, 
and in an instant I felt a slight pricking in my arm. 
In a few minutes I experienced a soothing sensation. 
The morphine she had injected was doing its work. 

She asked me where my mother was, and by a 
great effort I managed to mumble her name and ad- 
dress. 

*T understand," she said softly. 'Til write to 
her. I'll tell her what you want her to know. I 
understand." 

And I knew she did understand. I could see it 
in her eyes. I could feel it in my heart. And she 



MOTHER 239 

did understand for she wrote to my mother that I 
had been wounded and was doing well. It was just 
what I wanted her to write. I had enough courage 
left in me to want that. 

The morphine was at work now. I was relieved 
of pain and was much less nervous. I think I slept a 
little. Then I awakened. I was strapped to my 
stretcher lying on my right side. Just across from 
me lay a boy with his face half shot away. I saw 
a man approach. He climbed up to the boy and I 
saw him look at the lad's identification disk. He was 
a priest and he found by that disk that the lad was a 
Catholic. Then I heard him speak, oh, so softly and 
gently, so like a father to his son. 

"My boy," he said, "do you want to make con- 
fession ?" 

Those blasted features tried to speak but could not. 
A very slight motion of the hand, the slightest nod 
of the head answered. 

Then the priest began to ask questions. 

"Have you lied?" he asked. 

The boy nodded just a trifle. 

"To hurt anybody?" asked the priest gently. 

Just a negative movement of the head was the 
response. 

"Have you taken the name of God in vain ?" 

A nod. 



240 KILTIE McCOY 

"Blasphemously?" was the question. 

A negative indication. 

And so the priest asked all the questions. Then 
he administered the sacrament and then he prayed. 
First he prayed In Latin, a stated prayer, then in 
English, the kind of prayer a father" might offer 
for his son. 

Then there came over that dreadfully distorted 
face a look of peace and happiness. Around the hole 
where should have been his mouth, something like a: 
smile flickered. And then the lad sighed just once 
and was still. 

I had not been able to take my eyes from the scene. 
How I wished somebody would come to pray for me. 
If a prayer could make that boy die in peace and hap- 
piness, I wanted somebody to pray for me, too, some- 
body to put me right with God, before I must face 
Him. 

The priest climbed down, stood a moment as if 
undecided, and then to my amazement he came over 
to me, looked at my identification disk and saw upon 
it "P," meaning "Protestant." But he didn't go away 
as I feared he would. 

"My boy," he said, and there was a world of ten- 
derness in his voice. "You are not of my church 
but you are still one of my boys in this great world. 
Would you like me to pray for you?" 



MOTHER 241 

My great wish was to be granted. I nodded and 
he said : 

"It is not according to your religion, but would 
you feel easier if you were to tell God of your sins?" 

If that confession had made that poor lad across 
from me so happy, perhaps it would make me easier, 
too. I nodded. 

Then he asked me the questions just as he had 
asked the boy and with nods I answered him. And 
then he prayed just as he had for the boy. I felt a 
great peace come over me; I felt stronger and better 
than I have ever felt. Surely his prayer had been 
answered. And when he left me, I followed him 
with my eyes as he went from stretcher to stretcher 
making all those men, Catholic and Protestant alike, 
at peace with their Maker. 

Again I dozed and when I awakened there beside 
me once more was that vision of loveliness with the 
cool soft hand, the gentle voice and the red cross. 
She brought me tea and it strengthened me. Then 
she asked: 

"Would you like a cigarette?" 

I nodded. She placed one to my lips and held the 
match to it. I inhaled it and it helped. She stood 
there holding the cigarette for me as I smoked, for I 
could not use my hands and my lips trembled so it 
was difficult for me even to smoke as she held it. She 



242 KILTIE McCOY 

was tired I knew. Her nerves must have been tacked 
by the sighs and sounds but she never complained, she 
never tired, she never was irritable. She was always 
sweet and kind and handled us as if we were babies. 

One day she came in with a great mass of warm 
things to wear. Very tenderly she bundled me up 
and I knew I was to be moved away. Four of us 
were placed in one ambulance and as we drove away 
a Hun aviator circled overhead. Several times I heard 
violent explosions which nearly made me jump out 
of my skin. Kidtitr was demanding the bombing of 
hospitals. 

We were loaded into a hospital train and were 
soon moving away out of sound of the guns which 
had been our music all these months. As the roar 
grew less and less distinct, I remember having thought : 
"I'm hearing you speak for the last time. Never 
again will I listen to you bark. Good-by, Fritz." 
And somewhere in my heart I wished he might be 
eternally damned. 

At length I was placed in a great base hospital 
where there were thousands of other wounded men. 
We were all under canvas and now that the weather 
was getting fine, the walls of the tents were always 
furled up to let the sunshine in. 

Beside the flag pin that I had always worn on 
my tunic, I had in my breast pocket a little silk Amer- 



MOTHER 243 

ican flag that my sister had sent me. My own country 
was now formally in the war and I was proud that 
throughout it all I had been carrying the flag of my 
country on the battle-fields of France. Now in this 
hospital I had asked my nurse to pin this little silk 
flag to the wall of the tent behind my cot. She did 
so and I was the proudest man in the ward. 

Little Betty was the nurse. I can see her now, a 
wee bit of a thing with a heart as big as her body. 
I've watched her many a time with her teeth gritted 
hard together, her face white as marble, tears shining 
in her eyes, yet working nobly and ably to cure "her 
boys" of their hurts. She was a volunteer nurse and 
I could never understand how she stood all the work 
she did. 

One day great news went flying through the hos- 
pital. The first American unit to arrive on French 
soil was here. It was a hospital unit and it was 
camped near the ward in which I lay. How I longed 
to see some of those American lads, to hear the Yankee 
drawl, to see the flag of my own country flying from 
a staff in France. 

At last it was on French soil, I wanted to see it. 
Betty understood and made it her business to inform 
some of the men of that unit that an American, se- 
verely wounded, was lying in that base hospital. Then 
one day all my dreams came true. 



244 KILTIE McCOY 

A party of men entered the long tent and walked 
3own through the broad aisle between the rows of 
cots. I saw the uniform of Uncle Sam. If only I 
had not been strapped down to that cot I would have 
jumped up and cheered. But all I could do was to 
mumble through my quivering lips. They saw my 
flag pinned to the tent wall and rushed toward me, 
great stalwart Americans, in the uniform of my own 
country, speaking my own tongue, a part of me. 

They came to my cot and each man touched my 
hand — he dare not shake it. I could only look my 
appreciation and mumble a little, but my mind was 
clear. I knew them. They talked to me and that 
Yankee drawl was music to my ears. They left me 
American cigarettes. Every day some of them came 
to see me and then, one day, my next great wish was 
granted. For months I had been strapped to my cot 
and was moved just as little as possible. Now I 
was getting enough better so they took me out of the 
tent. Up there on a flag staff not far away waved 
Old Glory in the breeze. With the greatest effort of 
my life I managed to get my hand to my head. I 
saluted the flag of my country waving over there in 
France. 

You don't know what that sight meant to me. 
You can't understand how beautiful that flag looked 
to me. For two years and more I had heard all sorts 



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\VhrMiproo,.,ulii,-ioJ.v:i,.:'ti,,ns 
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MOTHER 245 

of things about the "great yellow race," how "the 
president will write another note" and all that sort of 
thing and I had a lot of bloody noses to my credit. 
Now they couldn't say that again for the flag was 
here. 

Then came a day three months later when I could 
be taken back to dear old Blighty. As I was carried 
out of the hospital, my stretcher was ringed around 
with American cigarettes. I think every man in that 
American hospital unit placed at least one American 
cigarette on my stretcher as he came to bid me good- 
by. 

Once more on a hospital train, to Boulogne and 
there put on a hospital ship. Here for the last time 
I saw evidences of Hun kidtiir. When I was on that 
other hospital train leaving the battle zone I thought 
I had heard the big guns for the last time, that I 
had for the last time been under fire, but once more 
though on a hospital ship I was to hear German guns, 
was to be under fire again. 

We were placed on board the ship in the evening. 
All night we lay in the harbor ready for a quick dash 
across the Channel when daylight dawned. During 
the darkness a German sub came to the harbor en- 
trance and began shelling our ship. There were many 
wounded Britishers and not a few wounded German 
prisoners, but that made no difference to the Hun. 



246 KILTIE McCOY 

He kept firing at us until finally chased away. One 
shot passed through the rigging and killed several 
persons on the quay. I learned, too, that the German 
prisoners on board got pretty coclsy during the firing 
and had to be repressed with some force. 

Next day we made the dash for England and 
arrived In safety. All the way across and even after 
we were on British soil, those who were able sang 
loudly that familiar old song : "Take me back to dear 
old Blighty." And we all meant it with all our 
hearts. 

Seven months In the hospital at Manchester and 
I was ready to go. I was given an honorable dis- 
charge from the army and before many days was out 
on the Atlantic bound westward, toward the Statue 
of Liberty, toward the land of the free, toward home 
and mother. 



THE END 



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